


i wanna get better

by thebelljarlife



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Drug Use, M/M, Rehabilitation, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:53:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 43,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6551848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebelljarlife/pseuds/thebelljarlife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It didn’t hurt to think about the fact that he’s worked all his life to get to where he is, only to realise that he doesn’t want it. He can see, almost rationally, that he wasn’t good enough – that he isn’t talented like Liam, that he isn’t likeable like Niall, or beautiful like Harry. He’s a boy created from spare and broken parts, and he’s never worked well, not really, but it had been fun to pretend for a while.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>And maybe he doesn’t actually want to die – maybe he just wants things to start over; to be given a second chance at his life and do things differently. Never start acting and singing – never audition for the X Factor. Maybe he’d never have left Doncaster, but at least he’d be happy.</i>
</p><p>Or; Louis, struggling to cope with the loss of Zayn and One Direction, is admitted to Castle Craig, Scotland’s private rehabilitation hospital. Healing ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i wanna get better

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday, [Tara!](http://achillesthegreat.tumblr.com) You're one of the smartest, kindest, and most accepting people I've ever met, and I'm thankful every day that we are friends. Thank you for writing with me, headcanoning with me (at the loss of your own sleep), and your continued support in everything I do -- no one could ask for a better friend. I hope that this fic is enjoyable -- keeping it from you was absolute torture, and I've wanted to discuss so many things with you for you input ;~; Anyway, I hope you like it and happy birthday!
> 
> A huge thank you to [Jamila](http://dearmrsawyer.tumblr.com) for beta'ing this on the fly. It got bigger than I expected, but you delivered, so thank you so much for helping me with it (and listening to me rambling about it for days on end). 
> 
> A disclaimer to readers: I am not a mental health professional, and I do not condone or encourage the opinions expressed here by either the characters who are patients or by the characters who are professionals. I'm a girl with a laptop, and while I've tried to research drug use, mental health issues, and treatment, I'm not certified by any means. Please take everything written here with a grain of salt, and if you are struggling with any issues, check out [this](http://mentalillnessmouse.tumblr.com/helpfulresources) list of resources for how to seek help.
> 
> Title comes from the Bleachers song, "I Wanna Get Better."
> 
> Castle Craig actually exists, and their website can be found [here](http://www.castlecraig.co.uk/). Please note that the description of their facilities, treatment program, and therapists in no way reflects the reality of their facility. Creative liberties have been taken.
> 
> A reblogable version of this fic can be found [here,](http://alwaystyles.tumblr.com/post/142783788873/i-want-to-get-better-%C2%BD-by-thebelljarlife-for) on my tumblr.

When it happens, it happens on accident. It happens on accident because he needs it to be an accident – if it means anything more, he’s not sure he could deal with that.

Maybe it happens because Louis’ hands jerk on the wheel, or because an animal ran out in front of the car, or because he was tired and falling asleep at the wheel. He’s not sure what they’ll say the reason was for his car swerving off the road – maybe they’ll blame another driver, or maybe they’ll blame the drugs in his system. But the truth is, it happens because he feels like he doesn’t have any other option anymore – because he’s just tired of the people and the course that his life has chosen to go in, and he just needs it to stop.

Hands tight on the wheel, knuckles popping white as he grips it with slick palms, Louis wishes at this point in that he was able to just stop thinking – to just let it happen. But the reason for this is because he can’t stop thinking, and his brain fires in a thousand directions, looping over all the reasons for why he’s high and behind the wheel, careening along the M1 in the dead of night with his high-beams washing everything ecstasy white. He’s thankful that he is high, because without it he might regret it – he might hesitate with his foot on the accelerator – but as it is, he feels tranquil.

It’s like his body isn’t his body; like what’s about to happen to him won’t even hurt and he’ll just float away, detached and feather-light, into space. He can’t stop thinking, but the thoughts don’t hold any weight at all anymore – and that’s how Louis knows that this is right.

He chases that feeling right off the side of the road, and if he considers it a happy accident as he accelerates toward the pole, then he’s the only one who’s ever going to know.

***

Except, of course, he isn’t.

He survives – that’s the first thing he thinks of when his eyes open and he’s blinded by light. Not that he’s somehow reached heaven, because that’s not likely; not with the kind of person he was, and not with the kinds of things he did.

The smell hits him next: clean, sterile. Hospital. He’s smelled it a thousand times on his mum when she came home, bone-deep tired from pulling a twenty-hour shift. He’s survived, and he’s in hospital, and all around him are the beeps and clicks and pings of machines that are stopping him from just… stopping. His eyes water as he stares up at the fluorescent light, which nearly blinds him with how bright it is, but that’s all he can do – lay there and cry and feel the drag of something like razors in his blood, which is probably down to the fact that he hasn’t had a fix in a while.

“Lou,” comes a breathy gasp, and Louis squeezes his eyes shut because Harry is the last person he wants to see. “Lou? It’s me. It’s Harry. You’re—you’re in hospital.”

God, how Louis wants to be sarcastic. Destructive. His head’s clouded, like he’s wading through cotton wool, and all he wants is to tell Harry to fuck off and let him die.

“You had an accident,” Harry continues, and Louis can spatially feel where he’s standing a moment before his fingers curl, warm and slightly clammy, against Louis’ skin. A rasp of knuckles that are in turns unsure and worried, loving and gentle. He realises vaguely that he’s cold all over, like he’s been buried in snow for a few years and Harry’s just managed to dig him up. Maybe he’s Captain America now. “But you’re gonna be alright. The doctor’s said that, like, you’re gonna be just fine.”

He isn’t. He isn’t alright.

When he manages to open his eyes, everything swims, and the tears that he’d pushed back now leak down the corners of his eyes. He can hear them when they hit the pillow, crisp and starched so stiff that he can hear the salty water soaking in, and he just—he sees Harry leaning down, sees his fingers swiping at Louis’ tears, and he just needs everything to stop.

“Don’t cry, Lou, you’re alright now.” Harry leans down further and presses his lips – dry, soft, familiar – to Louis’ forehead. “Gonna make sure you’re alright, I promise.”

Louis doesn’t tell him that nothing has been alright for a while now.

***

It’s the next day when his head’s finally clear and he can take full stock of what’s actually happened to him.

Waking up in a hospital is a lot like going to camp – you’re surrounded by people you don’t know, and the day starts early. Cleaners are the first to arrive in your room, usually before the sun has even risen – mopping the floors and wiping down the windowsills, using bottles of sterile chemicals that itch at Louis’ nose.

The lady in his room is middle-aged and fair skinned, with her dark hair pinned at the nape of her neck. She looks like she’s been awake for hours.

“Good morning,” she says brightly, though in a way that doesn’t invite conversation – it’s pressure free, a kind of rehearsed greeting that makes Louis open his eyes properly.

He watches her sweep his floor, and by the time she goes for her mop, he’s awake.

“What hospital am I in?” His voice is rough, jagged. He sounds like he’s been screaming for hours, not sleeping.

“King Edward,” and if she’s thrown by the question, she doesn’t show it. She mops his floor with practiced ease.

The hospital name makes Louis frown – Harry has opted for private, then, meaning that the press are having a field day probably five feet from the door. Licking his chapped lips, Louis looks down at himself, finally taking in the damage, because he’d been avoiding that – he hadn’t really felt anything except for the vague sensation of not being able to move the limbs he wanted, but with amount of pain killers they were pumping into him, he hadn’t really cared.

But now, he’s slightly more clear-headed, and he glances down to see that his entire left arm is in a sling. He’s shirtless, and his whole shoulder is wrapped up in such a way that means he can’t move it, even if he wanted to. He frowns, trying to focus on the fingers of his left hand, but they twitch a few times in a way that he can’t quite feel.

Louis turns his attention to his right side, which looks a little battered and bruised with cuts and scrapes, but aside from those and an IV, he’s damage-free. He frowns deeper as he focuses on his legs, and when he wiggles his toes beneath the blanket and watches it move, he knows he hasn’t broken either of them.

“The nurse will be around shortly,” says the cleaner, who’s finished and leaving, wheeling away her little trolley of supplies. He can hear her as she enters the next room with a gentle, “Good morning.”

***

He doesn’t have to wait long for the full prognosis: a broken arm, a fractured collarbone, and a hell of a concussion, but. He’s alive, says the doctor, and he should be thankful.

Louis isn’t.

***

He refuses to see Harry every time he comes to the hospital over the next few days. Bags and flowers and gifts are brought through the door by guilty looking nurses, who inform him that Harry’s in the waiting room, if Louis would like to see him. Louis declines, and instead rifles through the things that Harry’s brought, changing into clean clothes and shoving his dirty ones into the bag. He hands it back to the nurse and returns to bed.

The morphine is reduced, and soon Louis’ drip is taken away. He can walk, feed himself, and shower, and though his arm is still broken and his shoulder hurts every time he breathes, the doctors are talking about release. Louis ignores them.

The one person he doesn’t ignore when she comes is his mum, breezing through the ward and smelling the same as she had when he was a little boy, home sick from school. He feels a bit like that – small, vulnerable, dependent – when she looks at him for the first time, as though he might be swallowed up by his pillows if she doesn’t save him. And she does – of course she does; she’s his mum, and she collects him in her arms and holds him for several minutes that could’ve, if she’d have let him, turned into several hours.

She might be his mum, but she’ll always be his best friend.

“Harry said you’re not letting him see you,” she says into the top of his head as she holds him, her grip gentle on his damaged side but hand warm as she rubs soothing circles on his back.  
Louis doesn’t answer – he doesn’t want to think about Harry.

Jay sighs as she pulls back, smoothing her hands along his stubbled jaw and pushing his hair back from his eyes so that she can look at him probably. Louis’ seen what she’s looking at right now: dark circles beneath his eyes, a bruise on his forehead where he hit himself on the steering wheel, a few cuts from the glass where the firemen had knocked the window in to get him out. He’s a fucking mess, but at least she’s better at hiding it than Harry would be.

“What’s going on with you, love?” she says, fingers beneath his chin so that he can’t look away from her. “What were you thinking?”

He has to turn away, because he doesn’t want her to see that he’s lying when he says, “It was an accident.”

It’s rehearsed – it’s exactly what he’d told the doctors and the nurses and the police, who’d came by to do their report and file it away somewhere – but it sounds true enough, because that’s what Louis had told himself it was. It had just been a stupid accident where he hadn’t been focusing, and he’d lost control.

“I know, I just—“ Jay suddenly sounds uncomfortable, a hardened edge to her voice that makes Louis’ spine prickle in the same way it did when he’d be in trouble as a kid. He knows her tones better than anyone, and he knows she’s annoyed at something. “Do you want to tell me about it? That night?”

“No,” he says, and his own voice is cold. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Well, unfortunately, we are going to talk about,” and she sounds so authoritative that Louis has to look at her. She’s angry now that her concern has melted away at the sight of him living and breathing. “They said your blood test came back positive for cocaine.”

There it is, then – it’s out now, and Louis tries not to flinch at the truth, because when it’s said out loud like that—

“How long, Lou? How long have you been doing this to yourself?”

He glances down at where his good hand is pinching at a piece of loose cotton. “Does it matter?”

“I think it does,” she says, voice hard. “I think after what you’ve put us through, we deserve a little bit of the truth.”

We. Louis wants to tell her that everyone else knows – it’s just her that’s been left in the dark. The others had known for months what Louis was doing, and no one stopped him; he wouldn’t let them.

“A while, alright? It doesn’t matter – I fucked up, it won’t happen again.”

“You only think you fucked up because you got caught.” She stands abruptly, and Louis looks up at her quickly. Her gaze is hard. “I need to get going, the twins are waiting in the car with Dan. I wanted to stop by and tell you that I’m staying in London for a while, at least until you’re released.”

Louis nods, feeling a stab of guilt that she’d brought the whole family down, away from home, for him. He knows how much of a hassle that is, getting time off work and pulling the younger ones from school – he knows how much he’s putting them through yet again.

She kisses him on the hand, chaste but loving, before walking to the door.

“Let Harry come see you, love,” she says, frowning at Louis. “He misses you.”

Louis doesn’t agree, but she leaves anyway, disappointment following her with every step she takes.

***

He spends a week in hospital, total, before he’s given the all-clear and told he can go home. Louis hates how much he wants to stay, because at least here he has some semblance of control over his life – he gets regularly scheduled visits from his mum and family, he gets his meals catered to what he likes, and every morning, like clockwork, he’s woken up by Matilda, the cleaning lady.  
Never let it be said that life in a hospital isn’t without its perks.  
But they need the bed, apparently, despite how much money Louis’ insurance is paying them, and he ships out on a Monday, meeting Harry at the front desk as he signs himself out.

It’s the first time that Louis has seen Harry properly since it happened – he doesn’t count the night he woke up, because he hadn’t seen Harry fully, just felt the brush of his knuckles and the sound of his voice, which had been enough to know that Harry was in a right state over the whole thing. But seeing him – properly looking at him – is nothing compared to what his imagination had conjured up in Harry’s absence.

He’s completely wrecked, and not just on the outside, though that’s unusual, too. Normally Harry’s well put together, even on his off-days, but this – this is a red-eyed Harry whose hair is lank and flat, pushed down by a beanie that he’s thrown on. And where he’d normally wear jeans and a shirt, all clean and ironed, he’s got on track pants and one of Louis’ hoodies, which is too short at the wrist, revealing pale skin and thin wrists. He looks like he’s been through hell, and when he sees Louis walking toward him, he stands on shaky legs and smiles with bitten lips.

And that’s how he can tell that Harry’s a complete wreck inside, too, because his eyes are skittish and restless, darting all over the place like he hasn’t slept for days, and Louis just—he hates what that does to him, because he’s the one that was supposed to be hurting, and yet, he only managed to hurt Harry worse.

“Let me take that,” Harry says, taking Louis’ bag from his hand and slinging it onto his bag, standing awkwardly in front of Louis while the doctor slips into the office to organise the paperwork. “Are you alright? Do you want to sit down?”

“I broke my arm, not my legs.”

Harry startles, like Louis’ slapped him, and he nods. “Right—right, of course. Sorry, I just.” He looks for all the world like a kicked puppy, and Louis can’t stand it, so he turns to the desk and starts signing things.

He slaps his name on every document laid before him, filling in his insurance information and date of birth and every other mind numbing detail that they can think to throw at him. He’s just getting his prescription medication – no morphine, unfortunately, but they are kind enough to give him some Panadol – when his doctor slides a brochure across the counter.

“What’s this?” Louis asks, jerking his chin at it.

His doctor clears his throat demurely. “It’s for a private rehabilitation clinic,” he says, looking at Louis seriously. “It’s very highly recognised for its work in the rehabilitation of patients, and with its high success rate for breaking chemical dependency, I think you’d benefit a lot, Louis.”

The world seems to slow down until it stops. He’s hyper aware of Harry standing behind him, holding his bag, and he’s aware of the office ladies listening in, too. He can feel the doctor’s gaze on him – analytical, maybe a little pitying – and he’s aware of every other body that’s lurking in the administration wing. The rattle of the air conditioner, the sound of pen against paper, the tacky feeling of the medical tape against his skin.

“I don’t need to go to rehab,” he grits out eventually, not moving to take it. “I’m not addicted to anything.”

The doctor frowns. “Louis, I don’t need to remind you of the test results from the night of your accident,” he starts, patient and calm. “Your high readings of cocaine indicate that you not only were high that night, but—“

“Thanks, but I’m fine,” he says more forcefully, grabbing his bag of prescription pills. “Thanks for everything, doc.”

He doesn’t wait for Harry to follow, he simply walks out of the hospital and in the direction of the car that’s waiting for him. The paps are slow on the uptake, only a few managing to get a shot or two before he slides into the back, door held open – and then closed – by Harry’s security guard. Harry follows a minute later, sliding in on the opposite side of Louis and letting the duffel bag sit between them.

“Right to go?” clarifies the driver as security slides into the passenger seat, the shutters of cameras still audible.

“Yeah,” Louis says, pulling his hood up over his head. “Let’s go.”

Right away, he can tell that Harry is angling for his attention – can feel that Harry keeps looking at him, hoping that they’ll catch each other’s eye or that Louis will, at least, make the first move. But the thing is, he can’t – he can’t do that, because he’s scared of what he’s going to find if he looks Harry in the eye for too long. Whatever’s been broken inside of him over the last few days – his optimism, his sanity, his patience – is on Louis, and it only makes him feel worse.

They drive to their house in the country in relative quiet, broken only by the security guard – Brendon? Brent? – talking on his phone, quick calls here and there as he organises his schedule around events that are coming up in Harry’s life. Louis doesn’t even know what they are, or what his own schedule used to look like; he’d essentially wiped it clean the night of his accident, thinking that he wouldn’t exactly be there to see it through.

“Thanks so much, Baz,” Harry says with as much warmth as possible when they’re parked in front of their house, the car idling. “I’ll text you.”

Baz – Basil, Louis remembers – nods and wishes him a speedy recovery, watching carefully as Harry and Louis trudge inside the house and close the door before driving away.

The silence inside their house is oppressive, and Louis already feels like he’s suffocating all over again.

“Where’s Picasso?” he asks into the silence, hovering on the doormat like he’s hasn’t made his mind up about turning around and leaving.

“Mum’s.” Harry fiddles with his coat, shucking it and hanging it up before taking Louis’ bag to the bedroom, leaving Louis to settle in on his own.

The place, he discovers upon moving in deeper, is a mess.

He’s never really seen it this bad before, mostly because they hire cleaners before it gets to this point, but – Harry clearly hadn’t had time. There’s takeaway boxes all over the surfaces and papers strewn about, like Harry’s been digging through their files like a mad man. Dirty clothes are hung on the back’s of chairs and on the floor, and something’s been spilled on the cream-coloured carpet that looks a lot like tea. Louis doesn’t think Harry’s even tried to clean it up.

And Louis’ never been one to care about mess – he’s lived in it all his life – but this is so out of character for Harry that he tries to shuffle some of the clothes together in a pile with his foot before picking up a few of the takeout containers with his good hand. That’s how Harry finds him; hauling containers to the bin.

“I’m sorry, I meant to clean this up,” Harry says, flustered, as he goes to grab the rest of his mess and start hauling it to the trash. “I just—there wasn’t time, I just—I came here to crash, mostly, and this just. Happened.”

Just, just, just. Nothing just happens, Louis wants to tell him; nothing is ever just anything.

“It’s fine,” Louis manages to get out, walking around Harry to settle into his favourite armchair, pulling his knees up and letting his broken arm rest on it.

Without a word, Louis turns on the television while Harry cleans up, dragging his exhausted body around Louis in circles as he tries to make up for lost time.

Louis doesn’t stop him.

***

“When will you stop punishing me?” Harry asks him one night after Picasso’s settled and the night around them is still.

Louis rolls over onto his good side, ignoring the way everything within him aches – aches to be touched, aches to be held, aches to just not be there.

“Not everything is about you, Harry.”

***

His relative sanity lasts for a few days.

It was always going to end, is the thing – the façade of togetherness that the hospital made him feel wore off as soon as the doctor slid that brochure toward him, left him feeling cold and restless. Exposed.

People knew now – they might not know everything, but enough knew that drugs had been involved for it to start being a thing. Every time his mum came around, with or without the twins in a stroller, she’d ask how he’s doing, ask if he’s staying clean. It’s like a constant reminder that he’s not, rather than a sense of achievement that he is.

Louis hates and hates and hates until he starts hating the things he once loved.

He hates the way Picasso sleeps at the end of their bed, his heavy weight making it impossible for Louis to tug the quilt up at night. He hates the sounds Harry makes when he sleeps; hates the way Harry’s so particular about the way his tea has to be made. He hates the sun through the window and he hates the endlessness of the country all around him. He hates his reflection in the mirror, and he hates his cast, and he hates that things just hurt now – more than usual – and he hates that he knows exactly what he needs to make it better.

He hates that no one’s bothered to find his stash while he was gone and throw it out, because it’s so easy to just reach a hand past the books at the front of the shelf to find the box behind them. It’s far too easy when he opens it and finds his baggie of cocaine inside, still three-quarters full and pure as snow. And it’s too easy for him to draw a line and stare down at it, feeling the familiar itch in his veins and flutter in his stomach at the promise of what lies ahead – nothingness, maybe not the permanent kind, but at least a temporary relief.

He bumps two lines, one up each nostril, and only when he’s done does he smile – lets his body soak in the chemicals that it’s been craving ever since he woke up. The high is always different, and that’s what Louis likes about it: unpredictability. Sometimes he can literally be bouncing off the walls, running a hundred miles an hour, but other times, it’s a full-body satisfaction of weightless euphoria – like he couldn’t give a fuck what happened to him from that point on. Truthfully, he’s hoping for the latter as he closes his eyes and sinks into the softness of his bed.

Louis knows it’s working when the constant ache in his shoulder and collarbone disappears. His arm – broken, still in a sling – feels light, as if it was as good as new. Everything around him slows – even time – until he’s drifting along inside his own head in the darkness behind his closed eyes.  
It’s good – it’s really fucking good; it’s what he’s always needed, really. To just stop thinking. To not care.

To be able to let go.

And with this kind of carelessness comes a contemplation of the fact that his accident wasn’t really an accident. That he’s torturing Harry and his own family because of his fuck ups. He can coolly look at everything when he’s high like this, because it doesn’t hurt to do so – it doesn’t make him want to tear out his insides when he thought about his dad leaving, or Zayn leaving, or anyone else leaving him. It didn’t hurt to think about the fact that he’s worked all his life to get to where he is, only to realise that he doesn’t want it. He can see, almost rationally, that he wasn’t good enough – that he isn’t talented like Liam, that he isn’t likeable like Niall, or beautiful like Harry. He’s a boy created from spare and broken parts, and he’s never worked well, not really, but it had been fun to pretend for a while.

And maybe he doesn’t actually want to die – maybe he just wants things to start over; to be given a second chance at his life and do things differently. Never start acting and singing – never audition for the X Factor. Maybe he’d never have left Doncaster, but at least he’d be happy.  
That’s how Harry finds him, eventually: sprawled on the bed with his eyes glazed over and a smile on his face.

“Holy shit—holy shit,” and he sounds frantic, hands everywhere and face looming large in Louis’ field of vision. Louis doesn’t really know what the problem is. “Louis? Are you alright?”

“’m perfect.”

“Holy shit,” Harry says again, but now that he’s heard Louis speak, the worry morphs into something white-hot with anger, and his eyes are fierce as he hauls Louis up. He slumps like a rag doll in Harry’s grip, limbs heavy and body almost not his own. “What the fuck did you take?” he asks, cupping Louis’ face and peering at him, into his eyes, and Louis peers back.

“Your eyes are very green.” Louis smiles, bringing his good hand up to Harry’s cheek, fingers brushing his skin. It feels very soft. “You’re beautiful. I’m sorry.”

Harry pulls away from Louis and finds the coke – it’s not hard to miss, dumped unceremoniously on the bedside table on top of Harry’s copy of The Bell Jar. It had seemed ironic at the time to snort a line or two off of ol’ Sylvia’s hardback.

Louis watches, unfazed and content, as Harry grabs his phone from his pocket and, with a shaking hand, dials a number. He can’t hear much of what’s being said – his name is mentioned, and Harry says “I’m not sure, maybe an hour? Two, at most?” and at some point Harry starts crying.

“Come lay with me,” Louis says once the conversation ends, holding his hand out for Harry.

Blinking slowly, time continues to crawl by in increments that finally seem manageable to Louis. It’s like he’s been waiting for this to happen – waiting for a moment in his life when everything just seems easy. Because Harry’s here, and he’s beautiful, and he’s somehow stuck things out with Louis for this long, and that has to mean something. Louis feels happy, and he wants Harry with him.

Harry is still crying when he curls up against Louis’ good side, hand fisting tight in the material of his hoodie. “I need you to stop doing this,” he says wetly, choking back a sob. “I can’t keep doing this, Lou. I can’t—I can’t pretend that this isn’t happening anymore.”

Humming, Louis runs his fingers through the long ends of Harry’s hair. It feels like silk, electrifying the nerves of his fingertips.

“And I just wish you’d talk to me, because I’m here, you know that, right? I’m here no matter what and this is killing me to see you like this… The hospital, when I got the call—I can’t do that again, Louis. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

“Don’t cry, love,” Louis whispers, nose brushing along the top of Harry’s head, and as a result, Harry’s fingers curl tighter in Louis’ hoodie.

“Your car accident,” Harry says, quiet and nervous. “Was it—was it really an accident?”

The question doesn’t hit anywhere close to home for Louis – Harry could’ve asked about the weather or Louis’ favourite breakfast foods for all it matters, because nothing feels real or consequential when he’s high. He’s a thousand miles away from pain and hurt and trouble, and he doesn’t hesitate before shaking his head.

“Just had enough,” he says simply. “Just wanted to be the one who left instead of everyone else, for once.”

Harry shudders under Louis’ arm, breathing ragged, and Louis stares at the ceiling, floating inside of himself.

The next thing he really becomes aware of is someone in their house – a voice, strong and commanding, calling for the two of them, and that—that’s not right. Louis just wants Harry, not anyone else: this is them. This is supposed to just be the two of them.

But the momentary irritation gets swallowed up by a wave of euphoria, and he rides it through until his mum comes through into the bedroom, finding them both curled up into each other.

“Harry, go and get him some water please love,” Jay orders, and Louis knows she’s mad because her voice is that deadly kind of calm that always preceded a thorough lecturing.

Harry doesn’t want to go, Louis can feel it – the hesitation rolls off him in waves despite the fact that he’d been the one to call Jay; his fingers are tight in Louis’ hoodie, like something will happen if he loosens his hold for even a minute.

Louis sees everything with a kind of removed banality, but he’s not so far gone as to know that Harry won’t leave him if Louis doesn’t ask him too, and with the way his mum’s looking at Louis, it won’t be long before she tears them apart.

“Please,” Louis rasps, looking from his mother to Harry. “Thirsty, Haz.”

At the request, Harry nods and untangles himself, press his lips to Louis’ jaw. “Be right back.”

Watching him go, all colt legs and hunched shoulders, Louis realises that he’s put Harry in yet another awkward position: finding him high and being forced to call his mum can’t have been an easy choice to make, because a call to anyone else, like a hospital, would invite more attention than any of them want. Even after everything, Harry’s still trying to protect him.

“Get up,” Jay says, and Louis rolls his head to look at her properly. Her eyes are cold and her lips thin, and Louis knows that she means whatever she’s saying, but. It doesn’t hit him at all. It all feels like a highly interesting game to him. “Now, Louis.”

He sits up because he wants to, he tells himself, not because his mother told him too. And it’s hard and he can feel something like paranoia trickle in beneath the happiness, like weeds through cracks in the cement. Jay puts her arm around his shoulder and hauls up to his feet, and Louis staggers, knees weak and feet floppy, but she’s determined enough that she’ll carry his entire weight if she has to.

“Let me alone,” he grumbles, face screwed up as his heart starts to beat faster, sweat building on his palms. “I’m fine.”

“I’m not letting this happen to you too,” Jay says, half-dragging him out of the bedroom and into the bathroom next door. The tiles are white and pristine, but there’s a pile of wet towels on the floor that neither he nor Harry have been bothered to pick up. “I watched your father hurt all of us because of drugs, and I refuse to let you be like that too.”

For some reason, Louis laughs – he laughs, face tight and numb and eyes begging to close. “Think it’s a little late for that.”

“Don’t say that,” she tells him as she pushes him onto the closed lid of the toilet. “You’re not a lost cause – not if I have anything to say about it.”

He watches with patient eyes as she fills the bathtub up, water loud as it hits the porcelain, and Louis stares at it, gets lost in the way it falls from the tap forever, on and on and on.

Harry comes back, glass in hand, and presses it into Louis’, waiting until he takes a sip before taking it back.

“Get him undressed,” says his mum over her shoulder while she fusses about with bath salts and gels that Harry’s always collected in a little cabinet over the tub.

Louis looks at Harry. Harry looks back.

“If you don’t get undressed, I will, and I promise you, it’ll be ten times more awkward.”

Laughing, Louis goes docile, letting Harry undress him – tugging his hoodie over his head and, even when his sore arm is jostled, Louis doesn’t feel a thing. It’s like he’s invincible, like he could run and jump and fall and none of it would mean a thing, because he’s whole and barely there. Like his soul isn’t even tied to his body anymore.

He’s forced to stand as Harry tugs down his sweatpants, leaving Louis shivering in his boxers, legs still dotted with scabs and bruises from the accident – he’s got a particularly nasty purple thing forever blooming on his hip, and Harry dances around it lightly while Jay’s back is turned. He hasn’t seen Louis like this since the accident – hasn’t seen the extent of what happened, and right now, Louis can’t remember why he made that happen.

Harry’s eyes are wide and scared but full of reverent attention, and Louis wants to kiss him so much it hurts – it’s the first real thing he’s felt since he snorted the coke. Because as much as he wants to keep people are arm’s length, the exception has always been Harry – it probably will always be Harry. His curls look soft and his lips look red, and even though his eyes are bloodshot and the tip of his nose is pink from crying, Louis think he’s the most beautiful person he’s ever seen. The drugs in Louis’ system seem to give Harry an extra shine.

“Love you,” Louis says, whispered so emphatically that Harry near crumples over – he sways forward on his knees like a sapling in the wind, and that makes Louis smile.

The water shuts off and the bathroom is silent, broken only by the dripping from the faucet, and Harry breaks his gaze from Louis to stand up.

“In?” he asks Jay over Louis’ head.

She nods. “In.”

Harry’s strong enough to lift Louis up without Jay’s help, and he goes far more willingly when in Harry’s arms – it truly feels like he’s floating now, arm limp at his side and the corners of his mouth itching up. He can’t really even process what’s happening – his mum’s there, and there’s a bathtub of water, and everyone is so fucking serious—

And suddenly everything is cold – freezing, and Louis struggles against the arms that are holding him down, because they won’t fucking let up, and he feels numb all over, back to being Captain America buried under the ice, except no one is helping him—

“Stay still, Louis. You’re only going to hurt yourself,” says Jay.

Louis hadn’t realised that his eyes were closed until he opens them and he sees Harry – Harry, standing over him with his hands holding Louis in the water, and that makes him stop flailing.

“It’s cold,” he whines, finding Harry’s arm with his good hand and curling his fingers into his bicep, blunt nails biting into Harry’s skin. Water falls down his tattoos, trailing goosebumps in its wake.

“I know, but you were burning up,” Harry says softly, kneeling by the bathtub and loosening his hold on Louis a little.

“Wasn’t.” Louis shudders, heart pounding, and looks past Harry to his mum, whose standing with her arms folded and watching them intently. He wonders what she’s waiting for – an apology? A promise that he won’t do it again? – when she turns and walks out. Louis shivers and looks back to Harry, whose nose has gotten pink again. “Please don’t cry,” Louis tells him.

“Sorry,” Harry whispers, and his hands shift until they’re dangling in the cold water, and as Louis watches, he’s properly crying now – fat tears rolling down his cheeks and hanging off his chin. “I’m so worried, Louis. I just—I don’t know how to help you anymore.”

The cold water makes clarity come back in pieces to Louis’ head, but he can feel that the good feeling that had once bloomed so brightly in his chest is running out of time – soon, he’ll be back in his body and he’ll none of this will matter. He’ll have to face his mum and Harry and all of the things he’s said and done. He can’t run forever, no matter how hard he tries, and that makes him panic a little, holding onto Harry tighter.

“It’s not about you,” Louis tells him honestly – doesn’t see a reason not to. “It’s not because of you, and you can’t stop it. I am what I am, Haz.”

Harry’s bottom lip trembles and he drops his chin to his forearm, looking across at Louis. “I don’t accept that.”

And that’s Harry – that’s so quintessentially Harry – that Louis can’t help but smile through the fear and panic and cold.

“I don’t think there’s much of a choice, love.” Louis brings his wet hand to brush Harry’s fringe back from where it’s fallen into his eyes. His hair is so long now – the curls droop more easily, but the shine is still there. “I think that I’m just meant to be like this.”

Harry leans into the touch. “No you’re not,” he says insistently. “Let me help.”

“You’re doing your best, love,” Louis says quietly, dropping his hand away and back into the ice-cold water that’s turned his skin to prickles.

“It’s not enough.”

Jay helps haul Louis out of the bath after a few more minutes, though she leaves Harry to dry him off and stuff him into warm clothes. By now, the high’s well and truly gone – he’s coasting down nicely, feeling the tug of his body and the problems that come with it: his sore shoulder, the constant ache in his arm, the itch of bruises and cuts that are still healing. Above all is the weight of his sadness that will just never lift – the way he can’t stop his thoughts circling round and round like vultures above a carcass.

The problem, Louis thinks as he’s handed a cup of tea, is that there was never just one problem – it was a many-headed beast that always seemed to grow a new appendage when Louis least expected it. What began as a monster hiding under his bed when he was four or five was now something that he dragged with him everywhere; it was a monster that clung to his back, holding him down, choking him – and the minute he looked at one of its heads, another four were always in the background, waiting.

He’d made peace with it, somewhere along the way. Fighting it had been an uphill battle that made not only Louis miserable, but everyone around him, too. It had kept him from being close to Harry, from connecting with his friends, from experiencing new things and enjoying others that the band got to do. And when he’d freed himself – when he’d let it all slide away and he’d embraced the monster – he’d realised that, maybe, he could live with it. Shit happened all the time, and Louis could deal with it. Things with Harry had gotten better, things with the band improved – he was borderline happy.

Except happiness was never a trait that the Tomlinson’s had learned to hold onto; it just wasn’t in their DNA. And as much as Louis had come to learn to live with the monster at his back, he hadn’t prepared for it to bite him where he was most vulnerable: Zayn. The mere thought of his name sends a shiver through Louis, and he takes a sip of his scalding tea, trying to chase it away.

Zayn, who’d left and burned the rest of them down with him. Zayn, who had pulled the rug out from beneath Louis when he’d least expected it. Zayn, who’d killed any sense of feeling that had ever existed between himself and Louis. Zayn—

“I think it’s for the best,” he overhears Jay saying, and Louis’ thoughts fizzle out until he’s tuned into the conversation that his mum and Harry are having in the kitchen.

“He’ll hate us,” Harry says, trying to whisper but failing. “And I mean in the never-forgive-you type of way, Jay.”

“I’d rather he hate me than see him dead—I’m not going to sit by and do nothing, Harry, and I know you don’t want to either.”

“No, I don’t,” Louis hears Harry say, resigned. “Should I—should I call? Now?”

“I will,” she says, and there’s a fluttering of paper. “You go keep him steady.”

Louis takes another mouthful of tea, staring into space as he tries to absorb what they’d just said. He might not be high anymore, but he still doesn’t feel that much – he’s not euphoric, but he’s not sad, either. He feels hollow, and when Harry sits down next to him, Louis almost welcomes the company, allowing him to feel something other than vast leagues of nothing.

“You feeling alright?” Harry asks, fussing about with the blanket on Louis’ shoulders.

“Yeah.” His voice is flat, monotone. “Mum calling the hospital, then?”

Harry bites his lip, dropping his hands away. “Not the hospital, no.”

Looking at Harry curiously, Louis can feel his heart start beating a second quicker at the troubled look on Harry’s face – it looks like he’s been forced to choose between saving his mum or Gemma; he looks destroyed.

“Who, then?” Louis asks, searching Harry’s face for an answer. “Who’s she calling?”

***

Castle Craig Hospital.

Louis hates it on principle, especially because its tagline reads: addiction treatment centre, but he finds other things to hate about it, too – the fact that it’s in Scotland doesn’t help, or the fact that he’s called a chemical dependent by their standards. He doesn’t depend on anyone, let alone drugs – it’s vaguely insulting, he thinks, as he stares down at the brochure that Harry’s left sitting there. It’s full of sprawling green fields and the kind of artsy interior shots that Harry’d jerk off over if left alone with the catalogue, but it’s Louis’ now, and he hates it.

The entire flight to Scotland, Louis is treated like an illicit substance – being smuggled between planes and cars and terminals, as though one wrong foot will have security and paps descending on them. Louis just – wishes he could care more, at least about that. But he doesn’t; if he was worried about what people thought of him, he wouldn’t have crashed his car.

As it stands, what he cares about it bundled up next to him in a beanie and scarf, rubbing his hands together like he’s dying of pneumonia. Harry looks miserable, but Louis knows he’s trying to paint on a happy, positive face about this whole thing – like he’s excited that Louis is going to Scotland. “I’m just really proud of you,” he’d said through watery eyes before they’d left England, neglecting to mention that all of this had been decided by both Harry and Jay. Louis, once the news had sunk in, had rejected it – kicked up a fuss and thrown himself about, stoutly refusing to pack or talk or even move.

Of course, that’d help up for about an until his mum put her foot down, yelled Louis’ ear off about responsibility and concern and addiction, and Louis had half agreed to go just to get away from her. He knew, in his heart of hearts, that she’d been doing all of this since his ‘accident’ because she loved him – she always had; she always would. But it did nothing to help with the fact that Louis felt like he was suffocating within his daily life, let alone when his mum got involved – and in the end, how bad could it be?

Castle Craig turns out, Louis acknowledges begrudgingly, to be beautiful. The car takes them up a private and very remote gravel path that brings them out in front of the house itself. It’s an old manor sort of house, the kind that a family would have lived in and maids died trying to maintain; flagstone and towering, it stretches back from the front in such a way that suggests it’s huge. Louis grumbles about it, peering out the window at the neat flower bushes that dot the garden, already blooming and bright and, he notes, happy. Everything about it screams ‘We’re normal! We’re all happy! This is a safe space!’

Louis doesn’t feel normal or happy, and he doesn’t think a rehabilitation hospital is suddenly going to undo almost two decades of fucked up thoughts. But he looks at Harry, and tries to see it through his eyes: tries to imagine how happy Harry is that this is a nice building, how proud Harry is that Louis is even here, how hopeful Harry is that Louis can turn his life around. And Louis would do a lot of things for Harry, but he isn’t so sure he can do this.

Because therapy is something that has never worked for him before – he’s tried, of course; multiple times. Harry had suggested it a few years ago when they were having problems, and no matter how many therapists Louis went through, he hated them all. They were either too patient or not enough; too condescending, or too sympathetic. They were mouthy, too quiet, too optimistic, or, in one unfortunate case, too religious. Louis hates therapists because none of them had tried to talk to him as if he were a person, and if they did, it was because they’d learned how to do so – they weren’t real, and they didn’t really care.

“This is beautiful,” Harry says, awestruck and probably half-hard. Louis rolls his eyes, hauling his backpack from the car and leaving the rest of it to the driver. “Don’t you think, Lou?”

“Delightful. I’m already feeling cured. Can we go?”

Harry turns to look at him, hands deep in the pockets of his jacket because the wind is cold and fresh. His cheeks are already a wind-whipped pink. “Please don’t be like that,” he says sadly, smile drooping until he’s frowning, and Louis has to look away. “I just want you to try it. It’s only a few weeks.”

“I guess I don’t really have a choice, do I? You and mum would’ve made me come, even if I had said no,” Louis argues, squaring his jaw and looking around. “Stinks like horse shit.”

“That’ll be our Equine Assisted Therapy program patients mucking the stalls out,” comes a chipper voice from behind them, and both Louis and Harry turn to see a white-haired man standing on the steps, smiling pleasantly. Louis thinks that anyone who’s that serene in this kind of place is probably missing vital parts of their brain. “It’s only temporary – an hour, at most. The wind is already picking up.”

“Awesome,” Louis mumbles, just as Harry steps forward, pulling a hand from his jacket.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Harry and this is Louis,” he says, shaking the man’s hand and indicating Louis, whose forced to step up and shake hands, too. “We’re booked in for today?”

“Of course,” replies the man, nodding once. “My name is Peter Gears, and I’m the director of Castle Craig – I’m also in charge of admissions.” He fits Louis with a knowing, searching kind of gaze, as if he already knows what kind of drugs Louis has gotten himself tangled up with, and he can’t wait to be proven correct. Louis sort of hates him. “If you’ll follow me, we’ll see about getting you settled in, Louis.”

As they walk through the foyer and up some stairs, Peter tells them all the facts and figures that are printed in the leaflet – how the hospital sits on 50 acres of land, how they’re one of the leading drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres in the United Kingdom – all of which make Louis feel that much more uncomfortable. Because he’s wearing beat up Vans and a hoodie; he hasn’t shaved in at least a week, and he knows he probably fits the mould of the patient here a little too well, especially when he looks at Peter’s pressed tweed suit and the rich, royal red carpet which lines the hallways. Louis hates that he’s probably the picture of an addict pre-Castle Craig, and stubbornly, he doesn’t want to change. He doesn’t want to let them touch him at all.

They’re shown into a parlour with a fireplace and told to make themselves comfortable; tea sits steaming on a low coffee table while Peter walks off to find someone else. Harry demurely pours them each a cup, looking for all the world at home in this kind of place – like having a three-tier chandelier sitting above them doesn’t faze him at all. And Louis has to wonder what his mum and Harry had been thinking when they’d chosen this place for him – it seems more likely that the Queen will pop out of a doorway than for Louis to get the help he needs.

“Do you hate me?”

Louis’ eyes dart back to Harry, who’s nursing his tea and frowning at Louis. “Why would I hate you?”

“For sending you here,” Harry says, cow-eyes roaming about the fancy room. “For asking you to do this when you said you didn’t want to.”

The thing is that Louis does, a bit – hate him, that is. He hates Harry for being good and kind and patient with Louis, even when he least deserves it, and he hates Harry for wanting the best out of their relationship to the point where Louis feels like he’s going to choke on the expectation. And, yeah, maybe he does hate Harry a little for making him come here, because it feels a lot like Harry’s asking him to change when Louis isn’t even sure he wants to, let alone if he can.

“No,” Louis says, looking away. “I don’t hate you.”

Peter comes back with another man in tow – this one wears round, Harry Potter-esque glasses that are thick rimmed and very distracting. “Louis, I’d like you to meet Sam Harper, he’s going to be your main therapist for the duration of your stay here.”

The man is short – shorter than Louis, at least – and he shakes Louis’ hand with a warm familiarity that is supposed to put Louis at least, but instead makes him suspicious. “Nice to meet you,” Louis manages, even though the words feel like worse lies on his tongue than the one he’d just told Harry.

“Likewise,” Harper says, inclining his bald head at Louis. “Shall we get started?”

Louis looks from his therapist to Peter, who is standing next to Harry, and—he realises a beat too late that they’re separating.

“We haven’t—”

“I thought—”

“You’ll get to say goodbye in a little while,” Harper says soothingly, as though he’s placating children. “I’ll be giving Louis here a tour of our house while Peter will give Harry some information. We’ll meet back up once we’re all squared away, how does that sound?”

Louis is looking at Harry, who’s looking back a bit desperately, and they can only nod – Louis with a stiff jerk of his neck as he trails after the therapist, leaving Harry still clutching his tea like it’s a lifeline, and he feels Harry’s eyes on him until he’s out of sight.

“What do you think of Castle Craig so far?” asks the short man as he leads Louis down some hallways, which are furnished nicely with chairs and artwork and, oddly enough, a gong.

“Fine,” Louis replies, shrugging. “Wouldn’t have been my first choice.”

“No?” he asks, eyebrows raised. “Why not?”

Louis shrugs again, looking away. “Kind of a bit posh, isn’t it?”

“And are the class divisions within society something that concern you much, Louis?” Harper says, stopping outside of a room which has a name plate that reads Infirmary.

“Please wait until I actually admit myself to this joint before you start psychoanalysing me, doc.” Louis rolls his eyes and pushes into the room, smelling sterile anti-septic and clean sheets.

Harper laughs, a kind of jolly laugh that one might hear in the background of an expensive restaurant. Louis’ been to plenty of those, at least.

“Can do, my boy, can do.” Harper sits and pulls out a clipboard. “Please, have a seat. We’re just going to take a bit of a history to get a feel for what kind of detox program you’ll need to undertake.”

“Detox?”

“From drugs or alcohol, though from your mother’s call, my guess is it’s the former.” Harper obnoxiously clicks a pen to life. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

 

After Louis has been thoroughly poked, prodded, weighed, and questioned, he’s given a grand tour of the castle itself. He’s given a spiel about each room in the house – how the gym has start of the art equipment, how the pool is heated, how the kitchen serves foods that will both replace the nutrients that his body’s been stripped of and help restore him to health, how the library is fully stocked with a range of even the latest titles. Louis is bored by all of it – it’s a flash of grandeur, meant to make it seem like he isn’t about to be locked here for anywhere up to – and possibly beyond – six weeks. He already feels caged, like a lion inspecting its prison walls, and he hates it; hates every therapist he passes in the halls and pre-emptively hates every other patient he sees.

Louis knows he’s got a problem – he’s not stupid enough to think that snorting cocaine off of hardback books and wanting to crash your car against a telephone pole is normal; he knows it’s fucked up. But he also knows what works for him – what he can handle, and though he’s reached breaking point a few times before, he’s always talked himself back down. He might not have gotten there yet, this time around, but he will – and he doesn’t need these peoples’ help. He’s already tired of hearing Harper’s voice, and knowing that he’ll be visiting the therapist daily doesn’t help – he wants to see Harry, to maybe beg him to take Louis back home, so he’s thankful when Harper shows him to his room and Harry’s already there, waiting.

“Do you think you can find your way back downstairs and meet us in the dining room in an hour or so for lunch?” Harper says cordially, looking from Louis to Harry. “We’d love to talk some more about the program before you get started, just to be sure we’re all on the same page about your stay.”

“Absolutely,” Harry replies, nodding. “We’ll be there.”

“Excellent! They’re serving scones – nothing better than a fresh, warm scone!”

Louis closes the door before Harper’s even properly left, and he sinks back against the wood as he can hear the therapist’s footsteps fade.

“You have to take me back, Haz,” Louis pleads, looking up at Harry. “This is unbearable.”

“Why? I thought they all seemed like very nice people.” Harry drops onto Louis’ bed – an uncomfortable looking single. “Was your therapist rude to you?”

“What? No, he just—it’s like we’ve stepped into the Stepford Wives or something. People aren’t supposed to be this nice,” Louis complains, crawling onto the bed beside Harry and pressing his face into the warm crook of Harry’s neck. It’s the most he’s touched Harry since the car accident. “Please, Harry. Please don’t leave me here.”

He hears Harry’s breath stutter on an exhale, but he feels him shake his head. “Peter said you’d say this – that you’d try to convince me to leave with you.”

“Fuck Peter,” Louis says vehemently, pulling back and scowling up at Harry. “Who cares what he thinks? It’s about what you think – what I think. And I think I don’t like it here.”

“Louis—”

“Please, Harry. Fuck, I’ll—I’ll talk to someone back home, and I’ll, like, stop. Or—I’ll cut back, I don’t know, but I’ll try, just—just please don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me with these people.”

Harry’s eyes are wide and he looks suspiciously close to crying, and Louis can’t think about that when he’s about to be stranded in Scotland with a bunch of optimistic hippies who think they can somehow teach him how to be a better person in a few weeks while draining his bank account.

“I think you need this, Lou,” Harry says quietly, softly. His eyes roam Louis’ face, taking him all in. “I think you need someone to make the decision for you for once, because you can’t do it yourself. You’re only making your life worse, and—” He exhales. “And mine, too. You’re making us both worse.”

Guilt tears through Louis like a molotov cocktail through a bar, setting everything ablaze. Anger wars with shame, and Louis knows that what Harry’s saying is true; knows that Harry’s suffered because of the shit choices that Louis has made, but. The truth stings and burns and threatens to eat him alive, and he wants to kick and scream just on principle that someone other than himself gets to hurt him like that. No one should have that kind of power.

“You don’t fucking know how bad I can make this if you leave me here,” Louis says, and his voice is cold as he pulls back from Harry. “I won’t do it. I won’t participate.”

“Don’t waste this, Louis,” Harry says. “Please don’t.”

“I would never do this to you,” he continues, drawing right back into his own personal space. “I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t give up on you like this.”

Harry looks wounded. “I’m not giving up on you, I just—I don’t know how to help, and it’s killing me to see you keep hurting yourself. I need help, and I think—I think these people can really do that, if you give them a chance.”

Heart beating hard, Louis scuffles out of bed as best he can with only one working arm. He flops to the hardwood floors and puts distance between himself and Harry, feeling like he’s going to cry and not wanting the other to see.

After everything they’d been through together, it’s come to this: Harry dropping him on the doorstep of someone else because it’s too hard for him. And Louis knows that isn’t fair or logical, but he doesn’t care – he cares that his freedom is being stripped away, and he cares that he can’t self-manage in ways that stop him from hurting, and he cares that it’s going to be him opening up day after day while these people pick through his brain. He cares that they’re going to change him, and he cares because he’s not ready for that.

So he says the one thing that he knows will hurt Harry the worst, because he’s awful and he wants the other to hurt as much as he is.

“I wish I’d died in that car accident than live to have you dump me here.”  
And he turns to see that Harry’s pale, shockingly so, and just staring at Louis like he doesn’t even know who he is anymore.

“How can you wish that? How can—“ Harry trails off, breathing hard as he stands up, looking lost and confused. “I think I should just go, because clearly I’m making things worse. I can’t—I can’t be here if you’re going to say things like that.”

He makes a show of patting down his pockets, double checking that he’s got everything before he marches to the door, yanking it open and turning to look back at Louis. He’s crying – of course he’s crying; he hasn’t really stopped in what seems like weeks – and shakes his head at Louis.

“Please don’t waste this,” is all he says before slipping out, gently closing the door behind himself, and now, Louis is truly alone.

Perhaps, he thinks, that’s for the best.

***

Settling into life at Castle Craig is, oddly, easier than Louis thought it would be. The structure is organised tightly, leaving very little time for him to actually miss home or Harry or his family. He’s given a treatment plan by his therapist, which is personalised to his needs and requirements, but it also includes recommendations for exercise, topics to suggest talking about in group therapy, and books to read from the library if Louis is so inclined.

_Treatment plan._

There hasn’t really been time to rebel against anything – if the terminology and the structure of Castle Craig rub him the wrong way, there’s only so much he can do about it when he’s being monitored hourly. Therapists or nurses come by every hour, on the hour, and take his vitals, ask him the same questions, smile at him encouragingly.

Louis doesn’t know what they’re expecting – a violent, temperamental reaction, maybe – but he was never addicted in the first place. Or—at least, not in the sense that others are. The other patients in Castle Craig leaned on alcohol and drugs to get through their daily lives; it became something to help them get by from the moment they woke to the time they fell asleep. They spent more time high than they did sober, and while Louis can see the appeal of that, that wasn’t him.

He used drugs – and alcohol, sometimes, if he was desperate – when things got really bad. He was aware of his thought patterns when it happened; he knew he was making a mistake, and that drugs weren’t actually going to help. But at the same time, they did – it was a temporary relief from one moment to the next, and with a life as unpredictable as Louis’, that was all he needed. The band was constantly in motion: he never knew what city he’d wake up in, nor whether he’d even have a job six months from now. Because fans were fickle, for all their undying loyalty, and the music industry even more so, and Louis couldn’t rely on anything to be a guarantee.

And even though he’d known this – known that the band probably wouldn’t be forever – he still hadn’t been prepared for the moment it all came crashing down. There had been signs, of course – signs that Zayn wasn’t happy and signs that things were going to come to a head before too long, but. He’d buried his head in the sand, because never in a thousand years did he think that Zayn would actually leave – leave the band, leave him. That just hadn’t seemed realistic.

That was Louis’ fault, in the end, he supposed – that’s what he got for trusting someone, for opening up, because people will always leave. It might not happen right away, and it might happen in a few years, but they always leave him.

Getting high had been a coping mechanism; a way to escape the hurt of not only Zayn leaving, but the deterioration with the rest of the band that happened in his wake. They couldn’t get their shit together to save their lives – lyrics were missed, whole songs fucked up, and the tour crawled to a very sudden end. And that end of tour where they’d packed their bags in South Africa had been the end of the band entirely, and they’d known it, too – known they wouldn’t ever be back on the road. Returning home hadn’t felt like a triumph, it had felt like a failure and, in some sick way, a relief: because now Louis didn’t have to keep pretending he was fine every night.

Not being around Liam and Niall and even Zayn was a blow that Louis didn’t quite know how to cope with. He’d survived the breaks between tours by writing and recording; now, there was nothing – complete and utter radio silence. He still got texts occasionally – little updates from Niall, who was gallivanting across Asia with a backpack or from Liam, who was off living the domestic day dream. But it wasn’t the same, and living with Harry didn’t fill that void as much as Louis would have liked – there was too much empty space for feelings and thoughts to fester in, and Harry was caught up in his own projects; his own feelings.

It wasn’t that they weren’t close, because they were and things were mostly good, but Zayn leaving had ruptured something in Louis that had brought up old insecurities that he’d once put to bed, and Harry didn’t know how to navigate them. What had started as a few spats here or there had turned into, at times, all out warfare that left Louis drained and Harry withdrawn.

Cocaine had been there – a tried and true method of letting go, and it became easy enough to get his hands on a few grams to tide him over until his next hit. It made the end of his career bearable; it made staying in the same space as Harry liveable. Cocaine and weed and alcohol weren’t permanent solutions, but they’d do until something changed and Louis could move on – they were band aids for a problem that was out of his control.

And he knew all this – he lived with this strategy for months before Castle Craig, except now they poke at his brain, trying to get him to verbalise it all, and strangely, that’s the hard part. Saying it out loud.  
The other patients look bored, wired, or hopeful – sometimes an odd mix of all three – as the group therapist calls on Louis, asking for his thoughts on the topic. Today, it’s been loosely defined as what their thoughts are on stress, and how they cope with it.

“I make jokes when I’m stressed,” Louis tells the group, looking away from a woman who’s picking at the scabs on her arm. “Sometimes I smoke. Sometimes I just remove myself entirely from the situation.”

“Good,” says John, the group therapist. He’s a recovering alcoholic – makes sure to remind them of that at the start of each session as though it somehow makes him more relatable; somehow makes him their equal. “That’s good. Often, we try to remove ourselves from the stressor in different ways – sometimes physically, by running away. Other times, we use chemicals to do that for us – drugs and alcohol. Hannah, what about you? Does this sound familiar?”

Hannah’s a mother of three, blonde-haired and round in the face. Louis is reminded of every other mum that came to their shows while they were on tour – the kind that’s energetic and excited about the most mundane of things.

“Oh, absolutely,” she says, nodding firmly at John, then at the others. Her smile is gentle when she looks at Louis. “It wasn’t unusual for me to be drinking an hour before my children came home from school right through til I fell asleep. The stress of not only maintaining a home, but my husband—sorry, ex-husband, was—a lot. I removed myself with alcohol so I didn’t feel anything.”

“That’s excellent, Hannah,” John replies, looking around the group. “It doesn’t make you a weak person for not being able to handle stress or other anxieties – it makes you human. And part of your stay here is learning to find ways to navigate situations that once would have turned you to substances.”

Louis is sick of John’s patronising voice, and switches himself off, leaning back in his chair and tuning out the rest of the group therapy session as John asks them to meditate with him. It isn’t that Louis doesn’t think they can help him, because he’s sure that they could, given enough time – it’s that he doesn’t want to get better. The idea of returning home to that house with Harry and his entire life on hold without anything there to let him escape is—unbearable. Unthinkable; unmanageable.

He doesn’t want to change.

John lets them go for dinner five minutes early, beating the other groups to the dining hall. The food, despite all the nutritional propaganda that they espoused in the brochure, is actually brilliant; it reminds Louis of home, of meals that were wholesome and filling and cooked with actual ingredients, rather than popped into the microwave and pumped full of preservatives. He’s still dying for a cheeseburger, but being this remote in Scotland, Louis knows he’s out of luck.

He hasn’t made friends yet; not exactly. At mealtimes he sits with a man named Will – he’s here for drug dependency too, though he stoutly refuses to say anything more than that. A stoic; Louis can respect that. They sit in silence more times than not, idly trading comments about the food or the weather or some tidbit of gossip that they heard during their different group therapy sessions.

It’s been three days, and already Louis is One of Them.

“Louis,” comes a jovial voice from behind him, and Peter slides into the spare seat beside him. “Oh, cream of chicken! Splendid – a wonderful soup, isn’t it? Can’t find that kind of quality anywhere else.”

Louis swallows what was in his mouth and trades a scathing look with Will. Peter doesn’t seem to notice.

“No, sir,” he concludes, nodding. “I was wondering if you’d come by my rooms after dinner? No rush, of course, no rush! We wanted to assess your treatment plan and see about scaling back your monitoring.”

“Alright, yeah,” Louis says, nodding at Peter, who smiles. “See you in a bit.”

“Excellent! Really great. See you soon.” Peter gets up and smiles at Will, then Louis, before disappearing back into the rush of patients beginning to trickle in from their individual schedules.

“Twat,” Will murmurs. “Thinks the sun shines right out of his arse, doesn’t he?”

Louis turns back to his soup, shrugging with one shoulder. “Bit much, but he’s alright. Glad I only have to see him every so often, though.”

They ate in silence until Will was finished, and he broke open his crispy breadroll, which was still warm because Louis could see the steam rising.

“What therapist did you say you had?” he asks, buttering it while looking up at Louis.

He’s not a young man by any means – he’d be older than Louis’ mum, so probably mid-fifties – but Louis likes him. Likes that he doesn’t say much, but also likes that when he does talk, there’s no bullshit. He’s cut and dry and all business, and Louis respects that – it’s a hard to find quality.

“Harper,” Louis says. “Guy with the fuckin’ ‘Arry Potter specs.”

Will smiles with one corner of his mouth. “Had him before – good guy, actually. You like him?”

‘Before’ sounds ominous – how long has Will been here, Louis thinks.  
“He’s alright, yeah. Doesn’t sugar coat anything though, does he? Straight up tells you how it is.” Louis looks up into Will’s brown, watery eyes. “You two would get along alright then, yeah?”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Will says, smiling properly. Louis thinks that maybe when Will was younger, he had been handsome. “Just make sure you don’t bullshit to him, yeah? Don’t talk if you don’t want to talk, but don’t lie to him – he’ll know, and he’ll make you regret it.”

“Good advice, thanks.”

Louis continues to eat his soup, watching the other patients around him, playing a game that he’s tentatively called Guess the Regulars. Like Will, there’s something about the way the old-timers of Castle Craig move about the facility – calm, maybe, like they’ve settled into their place and resigned to riding out the full term of their stay. The newbies, like Louis, are still all jittery – restless when they sit, restless when they stand – they move above, and even when they can’t do it physically, they do it with their eyes. No newbie can sit still. And the in betweeners – the ones who are halfway through – are kind of like kicked dogs in the sense that they look sad most of the time, dragging their feet and turning at sharp sounds. But there’s a life to them that hasn’t been completely killed yet – they still remember the last hit they had, the way it was sweet in their veins or on their lips, and they want it bad. Louis isn’t looking forward to hitting that stage.

“Better head on, now,” Will says after a while, once he’s eaten through his bread roll and is picking up the crumbs with the pad of a finger. “Peter doesn’t like tardiness.”

Muttering something to the effect of “fuck Peter,” Louis bids a goodbye to Will, drops his plate off back at the kitchen, and heads up the massive central staircase to the infirmary. After a few days at Castle Craig, Louis’ realised it’s no longer the labyrinth he’d once thought it to be: there’s a carefully structured system to the manor’s layout, with all administration on one side, residence on the other, and therapy offices and rooms rather more central and secluded to the ground floors.

Peter, head of admissions and intake, monitors their health and wellbeing – he manages the nurses who come around to take Louis’ vitals, asking him how badly he wants to use on a scale of one to ten, and whether he’s experiencing any detox symptoms. He’s not, he says every time, because he was never addicted in the first place.

“Ah, Louis!” Peter says, opening the door and ushering Louis in. “Good lad, good lad. Take a seat and let’s jump to it, shall we?”

Sliding on the bed that’s covered in a fresh sheet of paper, Louis lets his feet swing over the edge, back and forth in a measured pace. He’s taken to just wearing socks around the manor house – there hadn’t seemed a point to shoes if he wasn’t going to be leaving any time soon. It’s against the rules of the house, but. Louis’ never been one to follow them to the letter, and he suspects that Harry’s probably paid the staff to overlook more than just his lack of footwear.

“You said it was about reducing my hourly monitoring?” Louis starts, looking at Peter expectantly.

“Indeed, indeed. It’s customary that we scale back monitoring within the first few days, once we’re sure that you’ve settled in and your detox is coming along nicely. Do you feel more comfortable with daily check-ins? The nurses have said that your vitals have been steady, and there’s been no sign of withdrawal—”

“Daily would be fine,” Louis says, cutting him off with a tight smile. “I feel fine, so if it saves Karen a trip up the stairs to my room every hour.”

Peter laughs, chesty and warm, and Louis can’t tell if it’s fake or genuine. “She’s one in a million, that Karen. But perfect, we’ll set you up with daily sessions and see how you go. And my door is, of course, always open if you have any pain, any nausea, any headaches—”

“Great.” Louis slides off the bed, socked feet hitting the floor. “Thank you.”

Just as he’s about to leave, Peter calls him back.

“Don’t forget, we’ve got a special meditation session on tonight – 9pm in the conference room! I’d love to see you there.”

Louis gives him a smile, all closed lips and cold eyes. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

***

Meditation is a lot like sitting in an uncomfortable position and being told to think of nothing while also thinking of everything, Louis thinks.

It’s not that he’s a stranger to meditation – Harry’s iPhone is perpetually hooked up to the speakers in the bedroom, and more often than not, he’s in there meditating before bedtime when Louis drags himself in from a round of FIFA. The music is boring and lacks any kind of anything, which frustrates Louis, because he wants to hear things – he wants to hear beats or lyrics or chords; he wants some sign that someone alive actually made what he’s listening to, because the endless lullaby that is meditation music makes him think of space and empty planets and darkness that threatens to swallow him whole.

The practice of meditation itself is just as boring – the idea of finding inner peace sounds like utter bullshit to Louis, and he sits with his legs crossed and eyes closed and on the verge of laughter for at least a good half hour. But the lady leading the session is serious – almost comically so – and she reminds Louis of Harry in the way she commits herself to it and tries to encourage all of them to join in. Because Louis’ lost count of all the times he’d laid in bed, hands behind his head, as he watched Harry meditate – only for Harry to ask him to join him.

Louis wishes he’d done that; joined in with Harry more. He wishes he had’ve tried more of the things that Harry asked him to – like when Harry had asked Louis to come for walks with him, or when Harry had asked Louis to take couples yoga with him, or when Harry had begged Louis to come to the all-day spa resort. All of these things weren’t Louis’ kind of place and they probably never would be, but he’s realising as he watches this woman struggle to control 50 patients that, maybe, it didn’t matter if it wasn’t his thing – it was Harry’s. And that should count for something.  
When he realises that, he tries harder for the instructor, committing himself to meditating properly and without a smile on his face. He attempts to let his mind go and feel the weight in his body; he tries to search through all of his thoughts from that day and discard the ones that hold negative energy. He “breathes in” love, and he “exhales” love, too.

And, surprisingly, the hour passes quickly – too soon he’s being told to open his eyes gently, and when he does, Louis realises that his body actually does feel heavy and ready for sleep; he feels relaxed, like there’s no itch under his skin literally begging him to get at it. He feels—good.  
Louis drifts up to his room, ignoring the sleepy bodies of the other patients, and collapses onto his bed as soon as he’s near enough. For the first night since he’s arrived, he sleeps completely through the night.

***

For all their doctrines about being dependent on substances, smoking is still allowed.

Louis and a few others are regulars in the ‘smoking garden’: a small courtyard a safe distance away from the manor house that’s surrounded by hedges and a few flowering plants. It seems more like a timeout system, from a distance – a group of people locked into a hedge-like prison where they can do nothing but smoke.

But the nicotine puts Louis’ nerves at ease when they seem their most unreliable – he can nick out the back door claiming he needs a smoke, and though the therapists seem a bit annoyed by the excuse, they let him go nonetheless.

That’s how he meets Rosemary, or Rosie for short. She’s short and feisty and can always be heard in the halls, yelling at her therapist or slamming doors as she walks out of group sessions. Most people, Louis’ noticed, stay away from her because they’re afraid of getting on her ‘wrong’ side – but if they’d bothered to pay attention, they’d realise that her anger was never direction to the other patients, but at the place itself. She hated Castle Craig with a fierce kind of passion, often taking her anger out on the house – doors, windows, skirting boards; nothing was safe. But she saved a special reserve of frustration for the staff, all of whom dealt with Rosie as if she were a bomb that was about to explode, and in turn, she makes sure not to disappoint.

Today she’s wearing a dressing gown over her day clothes, truly the epitome of not giving a fuck, and with a smoke hanging from her fingers, Louis can’t help but approach her.

“Got a light?” he asks, producing his own cigarettes, as he’s stupidly left his lighter in his room.  
Wordlessly, Rosie tosses her red Bic to him. Louis lights up, feeling her eyes on him, but when he hands it back, she’s disinterested.

“I know who you are,” she says after a minute as they both stand there smoking in their own little corner of the smoking garden.

“Yeah? Got one of our records, then?” Louis is a little surprised to hear that she’s a fan – not because she’s mid-twenties or because she’s here, but because she’s always wearing ripped up band t-shirts. Today she’s got Nirvana splashed across her chest beneath her robe.

And Louis’ not one of those music snobs who think that people can only ever listen to one genre of music, but. Surely this woman’s got better stuff to listen to than their bullshit.

“Nope,” Rosie says, taking a heavy drag of her smoke. “I don’t mean who you are outside this fuckin’ place, because lord knows that doesn’t really matter. I mean—I know what you’re addicted to.”

Louis looks at her sceptically.

“Truth,” she continues. “It’s my sixth sense. I’ve got a knack for guessing ‘em, right down to the brand of alcohol.”

“I’m not an alcoholic, love, but nice try,” Louis breezes, feeling slightly uncomfortable.

“Never said you were.” Rosie burns her cigarette right down to the filter before lighting a second one with the end of the first. “I know you were into a drink – can see it around the eyes and the gut—”

Louis looks down at his stomach, offended. He hadn’t thought he was out of shape, but maybe--  
“—but nah, drinking was never the problem. You smoked weed, but that was the same. Not the real problem.”

His neck prickles as he looks at her, red lips wrapping around the stark white smoke. “What was, then?” he asks, curious, unable to stop himself from asking.

She smiles, smoke drifting from her nose and clouding her dark eyes. “Coke.” And Louis swears he doesn’t react, but there must be something on his face, before her smile grows. “I’m right, aren’t I? It was coke.”

Tearing his gaze from hers, he takes a drag on his own smoke. “Doesn’t matter, does it? We’re all in the same boat here.”

“Maybe,” Rosie says, shrugging. “Or maybe you don’t like losing, and that’s why you won’t agree that you were addicted to cocaine. Or,” and she walks forward, circling around him just once, “maybe you can’t admit it. Maybe you’re one of those head cases that Harper picks apart and writes papers about them once he’s cracked ‘em open.”

Louis looks at her sharply. “What papers?”

“I don’t know, some academic bullshit full of lots of fancy words.” Rosie finishes off her second cigarette and stubs it out, not making a move for a third. “But that’s why he’s here, y’know – to study us. Make himself famous.”

His cigarette burns out too, and Louis flicks it into the provided tray of sand. “He can’t do that – he’d need our permission.”

Rosie fits him with a sarcastic, patronising look. “Did any of us really read the fine print of the admissions form? We could’ve sold them our souls and we’d never know.”

From inside the house, the gong sounds – a deep tolling that signals the start of personal fitness time, meaning Louis should be in the pool within five minutes. He reflexively goes to turn back to the house, but Rosie catches his arm.

“If you want to know more, meet me tonight – midnight, at the gong. I’ll show you.”

He thinks about throwing her off or telling her to go get fucked, but—there’s something about the look in her eye that reminds him of Zayn that he hadn’t noticed before, and it’s addictive. He’s missed Zayn like a constant ache in his chest despite how badly it even hurts to think about him, and maybe it’s because of that pain – the unresolved anger of it all – that he nods. Rosie smiles as she lets him go and skips off, dressing gown floating behind her like a cape.

***

The pool’s warm, and Louis is in nothing but his trunks, and everything seems very real, suddenly. For the first time since coming to Castle Craig, Louis’ aware of exactly where he is – and what he’s supposed to be doing. All around him are other patients, dipping their toes in the water or self-consciously unwrapping towels from around their waists, and Louis has never felt further from Madison Square Garden than at that moment.

He’s supposed to be exercising because a healthy body will give him a healthy mind, but—he doesn’t care. Looking around at the other patients in their varying stages of therapy, he realises that he’s not the only one who just doesn’t see a point in it. Why would swimming help them? Why would patting horses help? Why would yoga, meditation, eating well, or talking about their problems? It feels like a giant farce, Louis realises – like they’re all just playing pretend, like children playing doctor. Who says that these people know better than Louis? Who says that they get to tell him how to live his life?

Wading into the water, Louis can’t help but feel his resentment rise toward not only this place, but to Harry, too – because Harry’s the reason he’s there. It might’ve been his mum who made the call, but it was Harry who took the brochure from the hospital. It was Harry who turned Louis in to his mum when he got high, and it was Harry who hand delivered Louis right to Castle Craig’s doorstep before fucking off to god know’s where. It was always Harry beneath it all, working the scene like a puppetmaster, and if called upon it, he’d cut all the strings and play innocent.

The anger feels good, swirling as it does in his stomach – it gives him something to work with. The positive vibe from the previous night’s meditation is gone, leaving a kind of cold, hard, blank canvas inside of Louis, and he starts throwing hate and bitterness at it, wondering what’ll stick.  
He swims a few laps before wading around, keeping his shoulders beneath the warm water, looking around at all the other helpless souls. They’re all trying to be better, he thinks; they’ve all committed in varying degrees to getting their life together – to once and for all kick their habits. But why? Louis can only deal in thoughts that he knows to be true, and beneath it all is this: he liked the feeling of being high.

And if he’d been indecisive before, he’s certain now: he will meet Rosie at midnight, if only just to undermine whatever positive path they’re trying to put him on, because no one gets to control his life him himself.

***

Castle Craig is eerily silent once curfew hits. All patients are supposed to be in their rooms by 10pm, unless there’s a special seminar or movie screening, so when the gong sounds and everyone scampers off to bed, the house is still. There’s the occasional noise from staff, moving around down in the lower levels as they clean and get ready for the next day, but before too long, even they’re moving upstairs and into their own quarters.

Louis wastes time smoking out of his window that looks out across the paddocks, flicking his ash into the breeze and watching as the orange ember dies quickly in the cool night air. Somewhere, in the distance, he can hear a horse whinny, but other than that, even Scotland seems to be sleeping.

He thinks of home – of Doncaster and his mum and his little siblings, all tucked up tight in their beds, dreaming of things that Louis can actually help them achieve because of what he’s done with One Direction. That thought always brings him some sense of comfort: the fact that he’s enabled all of his siblings to have a future, no matter how obscure or far-fetched, is something that he should be proud of. And he is, because even though they’re too young to really understand it, he knows that someday they will – they’ll be able to write or paint or sing or travel because Louis worked for a few years on a stage, selling both his voice and himself.

The price tag for their freedom of course being this – Castle Craig. Because as much as he’s proud to have changed his family’s lives for the better, he also destroyed his own in the process, and he hadn’t expected that when he auditioned for The X Factor. His dreams of singing across the world and making new friends and experiencing cool things had never evolved into getting high in stadium bathrooms or dealing with a guy in a filthy club in the backstreets of Indonesia. It was hardly ever glamorous, and almost always corrupt, and Louis hopes that his family never have to know any of that, either.

At ten to midnight, Louis pulls on a hoodie but neglects his shoes, reasoning that walking in socks would allow him to better control the sound he makes on the floorboards (which can be temperamental, given that it’s an old house). He slips out of his room, making sure to stuff a bundle of clothes beneath the quilt in case Karen comes around for a nightly check before he’s gone. With the light out, Louis glances back to see that the lump beneath the covers could, maybe, if a person squints, pass for a body – but he doesn’t really care about being caught, if he’s honest. What are they going to do? Throw him out? Give him detention?

As he tiptoes down the hallway, walking more by memory than sight, Louis can hear sounds behind each door he passes. There’s murmuring in some, like a person’s speaking on a phone or reading aloud, while others house the snores and snuffles of the sleeping. From behind one or two there’s soft music, like a person is meditating, though by far the majority of them are silent. Downstairs is silent, too – there’s a faint sound of whistling, which Louis knows belongs to Mavis in the kitchens, but the house is now resting.

He waits by the gong (which serves as a time keeper in Castle Craig – a way to signal the end of a time block in everyone’s schedules) with anticipation, flinching at every sound, lest it belong to a therapist. Louis feels oddly exposed, heart beating with both fear and excitement; it’s been a good long while since he did anything against the rules. After Zayn left, there just didn’t seem like a point, because even if Liam or Niall might’ve been willing accomplices, it wouldn’t be the same – he didn’t need followers, he needed partners in crime.

Rosie was exactly that – not bothering to sneak up on him but instead, she glides out of the shadows, as quiet as a mouse, eyes alight with mischief.

“You came,” she whispers, voice barely there. “Good. Follow me.”

The route that Rosie takes him leads them straight to the back of the manor house in an area that’s plastered with signs that read ‘Staff Only.’ Undeterred, Rosie walks through a series of doors, seemingly at home, and Louis walks behind her, wondering if he should be memorising the path as he gently closes the door behind himself.

The staff only area of Castle Craig is mostly a hallway of storerooms and supply closets, and Rosie drops back to walk beside Louis quietly. She doesn’t say anything; she doesn’t even really look at him, but there’s something there, between them; a comradery, perhaps, like they’re the only two sane-thinking people in this entire place. Louis wants to ask her why she’s here or why she doesn’t just leave if she hates it so much, but his questions are derailed when she opens a door to reveal a dark stairwell and ushers him through it first.

Louis expects it to be noisy, but the steps underfoot are steel and cold and silent as the grave, and Louis slides down them easily, Rosie on his heels; the warmth of her body obvious in the cold, metal stairwell. It opens out somewhere near the therapist’s offices, because Louis can see a painting that stands opposite the door to Harper’s.

“This way,” Rosie says, turning around and walking away from the offices and into what looks like some kind of administration room – large storage files are kept here, labelled alphabetically. Rosie closes the door after Louis and shuts the blinds. “This is how you make it through the program here,” she tells Louis, smiling through the dark and opening one of the cabinets.

“By spying?”

“By learning.”

She flips through one of them until she finds what she’s after, and hands it to Louis. Using the glow from his phone on its dimmest setting, he sees his own name inked across the front: TOMLINSON, LOUIS.

“Go on, then,” Rosie says, pulling out another file and sitting on the floor. “Read. Learn.”

Settling beside her, they share the light from Louis’ iPhone to read their separate files, flicking through the notes that have been attached there by different therapists over the course of their stay. Rosie’s is much thicker than Louis’, and he wonders how long she’s been there – he wants to ask, but her face is twisted into a scowl that makes him think twice, and he turns back to his own notes.

There’s a lot of jargon he doesn’t understand – fancy words for how fucked up he is, apparently – and he skims until he finds something he can comprehend without having to pull up an online dictionary.

Louis’ childhood continues to be a sight of trauma. Father ? Mother ?

He rolls his eyes – anyone could’ve written that, including a fan equipped with nothing but one of their shitty annuals.

His sexuality seems to not only be a point of contention, but something which he represses as part of the problem. This, in conjunction with….

Louis turns the page.

His relationship with long-term partner…

Depression ? Bipolar ?

Yawn, yawn, yawn. If this is what Harry paid for, Louis thinks he would’ve been better off staying at home and writing all of this out himself. He reaches the end of Harper’s notes and tosses the file on the ground, turning to watch Rosie.

“You do this often, then? Read up on your progress?”

She smiles, sleepy eyes looking up at him. “How else are you going to know what works and what doesn’t? The point is to get out of here faster,” she says. “So, you find out what they liked and what they didn’t, and go from there. Might shave a week or two off your stay.”

She’s like something out of a movie, Rosie is – all sly tricks and rebellious attitudes, and Louis really, really likes her. She might be the most real thing he’s encountered since he arrived.

“What’d yours say?” she asks, closing her own and hugging it to her chest. “Harper onto dissecting that cocaine habit of yours?”

“It wasn’t a habit,” Louis retaliates before he realises something. “You’ve looked at my file.”

She doesn’t deny it.

“That’s how you knew what I used. No doubt you probably look at everyone’s files, so I’m probably not that special.”

“On the contrary, darling,” Rosie says, leaning forward so that her eyes glow from the light. “You’re very special. Not every day we’re graced with the presence of a celebrity, is it?”

Louis fits her with a dubious look. “Not much of a celebrity if I’m here.”

“Should I start writing down notes for your file? Lack of self-worth,” Rosie says with a smirk, pretending to jot it down mid-air. “C’mon. We both know that that isn’t quite true. Probably millions of people out there begging to be where I am.”

He looks way, her stare too intense – it reminds him of Zayn when he’d be high and talking about the world and their place and all the things he wants to do; it’s like there’s universes captured within their eyes, desperate to be released, and Louis can only watch on from the moon that he’s chained to.

“You realise pretty quickly that that actually doesn’t mean a great deal,” Louis says, standing up and replacing his file back in his alphabetised spot.

“You want me to cry you a fucking river? You’re rich – you really don’t get to complain,” Rosie snaps, snatching her file up and shoving it back in her own drawer. “Poor lonely little rich boy, snorting coke to fill in the loneliness that fame created.” She laughs, bitter. “Give me a break – I thought you were different than that, Louis.”

Something about her words gets to him, and he whirls around. “I am.”

“Prove it,” she says immediately. “Prove you’re not like the rest of them and wallowing in your own self pity just to fill out your next record.”

“Why the fuck do you even care?” Louis can’t help but ask, staring at her – it makes his skin prickle with how easy it is to imagine it’s Zayn, standing there after all this time and asking if Louis is still Louis. “What’s it to you?”

“Because you’re possibly the most interesting thing to walk through that door since I arrived,” Rosie says coolly, and the illusion is shattered. “And I hate being bored.”

***

Louis spends most of his free time with Rosie, slipping out of group therapy sessions to smoke together in the garden, flicking their burnt-out butts at the box of sand and missing half the time. And as loud and fierce as Rosie is when battling with the therapists, alone she’s quite the opposite – there’s still a fire inside of her that Louis sees simmering, but she’s witty and sharp and funny. He learns things about her more from her anecdotes than from asking questions – he learns that she’s an artist, full time, and that she’s sold quite a few; he learns that she has only one family member left alive – a dad, somewhere in Wales; and he learns quickly that she really likes acid.

“My art would be nothing without it,” she tells him one day as they sit in the garden, arms and legs soaking in the sun while they ignore the fact that they’re supposed to be in the gym. “If I didn’t get high and paint, I’d be broke and homeless.”

Louis can’t disagree, because as much as it blows to be at Castle Craig, cocaine helped him get through the last tour when things were at their worst, and without it, he wouldn’t be able to support his family like he does. He keeps that to himself, though, not wanting to ply Rosie with information any more than she’s already read in his file.

“You should come see a show of mine when you’re out,” Rosie says, nudging him and smiling. “Splash some of your cash, huh?”

He smiles. “Art was never really my thing, but Harry would probably love it. He collects artwork and the like.”

“Harry.” Rosie mulls the name over. “This your husband, then?”

“Boyfriend,” he corrects, an edge to his tone. A warning. “We’ve been seeing each for, like, five years.”

She lets out a low whistle. “Got wedding bells on the brain then, has he? That why you--?” and she pretends to snort a line of coke, one finger blocking one nostril, before cackling at the sour look she must read on Louis’ face.

“No, we haven’t even talked about getting married – there was always too much shit going on.”  
Rosie hums. “Doesn’t mean he hasn’t been thinking about it.”

And that makes Louis sweat, because of course Harry’s thought about marriage before – it’s Harry. He loves domestic displays of affection; he loves children and old couples and renewing vows. He’s probably got a wedding planner stuffed full of ideas, just waiting for the moment that they both agree, and Louis doesn’t know how he never thought of this before – of Harry wanting more – but now he can’t stop, and his head throbs with it. Rosie laughs.

“Fear of commitment too then, hey? You’re a real catch.”

“Fuck off,” he mumbles, brushing himself off as he stands. “I should get back. You coming?”

“Nah,” she says, waving a hand around. “I’ll make up my gym hour tomorrow.”

Louis doesn’t argue as he heads back inside. Reaching into his pocket as he walks, he pulls out his phone and thumbs in the passcode, noticing that he has a few notifications – a text from his mum, which is a general well wish text, a few from Instagram, and one from Niall. He ignores the lot and opens up the chat with Harry, eyes scanning their previous conversation, which had been mundane and boring – Harry texting Louis which cereal he wanted before he was at the store and had forgotten.

They haven’t spoken in a week – not since Harry walked out – and Louis can feel the tendrils of loneliness ensnare him as his fingers hover over the keyboard, wondering what he should type.  
“I miss you” is too blatant, too needy – it gives the impression that Louis regrets what he said, and he’s not so sure that he does. He types out a quick are you still in Scotland? before walking into the gym and avoiding eye contact with the trainer in charge of the group session. He sits on an exercise bike and pedals lethargically, waiting for the buzz of his phone to come through with a text from Harry – and he’s not disappointed when, five minutes later, Harry replies.

Yeah.

One word responses mean that he’s still angry at Louis, so he types quickly. _You ever going to visit ?_

**_Thought you wouldn’t want me to._ **

Louis frowns. _I’m in a strange place and know no one. Of course I want you to visit._

He knows Rosie and Will, so it’s not strictly true, but he wouldn’t mind seeing a familiar face, especially after what Rosie said – Louis feels disconnected from Harry, like he doesn’t even know him anymore.

**_I’m busy today, but I’ll come soon._ **

He tries not to feel hurt by that, because he did this; he drove a wedge between them. _Okay. Let me know what day you’re coming and I’ll put on my best jacket._

 ** _Jacket?_** Harry types back.

_Straight jacket. You know.. because I’m in rehab._

Louis watches the typing bubble appear and disappear for several minutes until Harry’s text finally comes through.

**_That’s not funny, Louis._ **

He knows it’s not, but it’s all he’s got, so he doesn’t bother typing back and instead pockets his phone and pedals a little faster.

***

“Fuck him,” Rosie says one night, three days after Louis invited Harry to come. “Fuck that fucking arsehole, you know?”

They’re down in the trees, passing back and forth a bottle of something strong that Rosie has, somehow, managed to sneak onto the property. What with all the tight regulations and searches and whatnot, Louis is amazed, and doesn’t plan on wasting her hard work.

“Yeah, I guess,” he mumbles, uncommitted. He can’t blame Harry, really – after the things he’s said and done over the last few weeks, Louis isn’t surprised that maybe Harry is finally catching on that Louis isn’t a good person. That, maybe, he deserves to be with someone better.

“Listen.” Rosie presses the bottle into his chest and swings herself up onto her feet. “The thing with being a ‘chemical dependent,’” and she makes air quotations around the term, “is that we poison everyone around us. And the truth is that the people that love us the most will never say we are – they’ll just suffer in silence.”

Louis takes a sip and looks up at her. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that people like us – we’re better off alone, that way we can’t hurt anyone. Because you’re always going to be an addict, even when you’re out of here. Even when you don’t use anymore – you’ll always have that within you, and because of that, you’ll always hurt him. You’ll always hurt Harry.”

Looking at her as she finishes speaking, Louis’ reminded of something that Zayn once said to him when he had turned up on Zayn’s doorstep after fighting with Harry. “You need to make sure you’re okay with constantly hurting Harry because of who you are. You can’t help it, and he can’t help forgiving you.” The words make him shiver now, wondering how everyone is a better judge of his relationship with Harry than himself.

“I don’t want to lose him,” he says quietly, eyes dropping back to the half-empty bottle in his hand. “Like—sometimes I think he’s the only reason I even made it this far.”

“Where is he, then?” Rosie crouches in front of Louis, eyebrows raised. “If he loved you, why isn’t he here?”

Louis can’t answer that, because in order to explain why Harry’s staying away, he’d have to explain his car accident, and he isn’t ready for anyone to know about that. Not yet. So he shrugs and struggles to his feet, feeling the alcohol hit his head all at once.

“Doesn’t matter,” he mumbles, grabbing onto the trunk of a tree to steady himself. “If he leaves me, he’ll just be doing what the rest of ‘em have done.”

Capping the bottle, Rosie half-climbs the tree to place it in the fork of a branch for safe keeping and future use. “Truth,” she says honestly, dropping back onto the pine needles. “Men are shit, no offense.”

“None taken.”

“Good, because you’re not that shit,” she says with a smile, pulling Louis up the slope that leads them back to the manor. “I mean, your records might be a little shit—“

“—Hey—”

“—but you’re alright.”

Louis looks at her through the twilight, studying her profile. “Thought you said you weren’t a fan?”

She laughs, head tipped back and smile wide. “I said no such thing – you assumed.” She shrugs, kicking a stone with the toe of her boot and shoving her hands into the pockets of her coat – Scotland, once the sun goes down, gets freezing. “I have a few back home, yeah.”

“Ever go to see us play?” he asks, somehow desperate for any connection to his old life. Castle Craig has rendered him almost normal, and playing on stages to hundreds of thousands of people feels like a lifetime ago, or like it happened to someone else.

“Couldn’t afford it. You guys really ought to consider lowering your prices – we’re not all loaded.”

The lights of Castle Craig are all on, beckoning them closer, and Louis can feel that he’s a little tipsy. He stumbles through the front door, Rosie behind him, and they make their way straight to the dining room; they’d missed the gong signalling that dinner had been served, but the clamour of the other patients and staff is hard to miss.

No one pays them much attention as they walk through and pick up a plate, already used to the fact that Rosie is always doing what she wants. Harper, Louis’ therapist, watches them – Louis can feel his beady-eyed gaze as he scoops up peas and mashed potato, heaping it onto his plate and moving on. Harper has yet to broach the topic of Louis’ new friendship during their sessions, but he doesn’t really have to – he’s clearly disproving, and Louis is proven correct when he glances over and sees Harper all but scowling at them.

Dinner is quiet, mostly, broken only by Rosie or Louis giggling, tipsy and giddy, as they flick their peas at one another across the table and ignore the glares of the other patients.

“I was going to tell you, too,” Rosie says, picking a pea out of her hair and dropping it onto her plate. “Tomorrow’s lesson is about the twelve steps – we’re refreshing.”

“Twelve steps? What does that mean?”

“Oh, you know, the thing they bang on about to help everyone kick their habits – twelve steps to help you acknowledge your problems and embrace abstinence or whatever. A load of bullshit, if you ask me, but – mandatory, unfortunately.” Rosie’s elbows connect with the table as she leans forward, lowering her voice. “Full of religious shit, too.”

“Come off it,” Louis says, laughing. “They can’t do that – this isn’t fuckin’ bible camp.”

Rosie shrugs. “Wait and see, then. Steps one through twelve all talk about god-this and god-that. If you don’t smile pretty and nod your head along with them, you won’t be getting out of here any time soon.”

“And you do, do you? You play along?” Louis asks, irritated.

“I know when to pick my battles, and this isn’t one of them. Fighting with therapists is one thing, but going against the twelve steps? Even I’m not that stupid.” Standing, Rosie collects her plate and cutlery. “But between you and me, I ain’t following a single one of them.”

With one last smile, she leaves, dropping her plate back in the kitchen and heading out the door, leaving Louis with a bad feeling curling in his stomach. It’s not that he’s against religion, really – but he’s not a devout believer, either. There’s always been some kind of murky middleground that he’s inhabited, somewhere left of atheism but not quite willing to commit to being agnostic. He just doesn’t care about religion, and if this place is going to force him to, he knows it’ll end badly.

Once he’s back in his room, he pulls out his phone and texts Harry. _Are you unbusy yet?_

He feels annoyed, and the alcohol only serves to enhance that feeling.

This whole place – this whole fucking place – is a farce, and Louis is tired of it. It’s been a bit over a week, and he wants to go home; he wants to go back to his bed, and his TV, and his dog. He wants the freedom to be allowed to get high or drunk when he sees fit, because those are normal things that normal people do, and he wants to be free to make them. In fact, he just wants to be allowed to make mistakes, period – especially if he chooses to make them. He can feel himself getting so worked up that he starts thinking in extremes – about how he wished none of this had’ve happened, and that if it all had’ve ended with that car crash, maybe it would’ve.

Looking down at his arm that’s still in its cast, Louis wonders how he even failed to die properly. And then his phone buzzes.

**_I can come tomorrow if you’re free._ **

The text is so barren of feeling and concern that Louis wants to throw his phone at the wall, because the one person who’s supposed to care hates him. It’s hypocritical and contradictory but Louis never meant to hurt Harry with any of this – not the drugs or the car accident – but he has; he’s hurt him and maybe lost him and that just loops Louis right back around to wanting to just… stop. To just not be here, or there, or anywhere anymore.

 _Yeah, I’m free,_ he types, _What time?_

**_Lunch?_ **

_Okay. See you then._

Harry doesn’t text back, and Louis drops onto his bed, phone pillowed on his chest as he stares at the plastered ceiling. Part of him wants to just stop breathing, right here and now; the other part wants to live so he can be reckless, because as much as Louis wants things to stop, he also can’t help that there’s a tiny, miniscule part of him that continues, in vain, to hope. Like a weed pushing up through the cracks in the pavement, he wants to hope that things can change for him.

The more rational part of his brain knows that they never will.

***

As it turns out, Rosie wasn’t kidding when she said that the twelve steps were about God.

Part of Castle Craig’s treatment program is to undergo lessons – educational and informative, the therapists gather all the manor’s patients into one room and proceed to lecture them for a few hours about the reasons why their brains are fucked up and why they become addicted to substances. Sentences like “it’s a disease” and “you’re not a bad person” are bandied around, except—you can be a bad person without drugs or alcohol, and Louis sort of thinks that he’d have a better chance of beating a physical disease than an invisible one that lives in his head.

But the part that gets to him is that they’re all asking God for his forgiveness; to have him remove the defects of character that led them all to leaning on drugs or alcohol. And that just—doesn’t gel with Louis, especially when he looks around and sees all the other patients nodding or looking contemplative but willing, because he can’t do this. He can’t nod and smile like Rosie told him to, and he can’t pretend to put his faith in a higher power that he doesn’t think exists.

He ends up walking out, much to the therapists’ surprise, but he doesn’t care – he just walks out, letting the door click closed behind him, and makes for the smoking garden. He lights up immediately, taking in a grateful drag and exhaling, long and low, feeling his heart rate begin to slow back down once again.

“Louis,” comes a measured voice, and he turns to see Harper coming toward him. Obviously he’s heard about Louis walking out, despite the fact that it just happened – nothing, it seems, goes unseen at Castle Craig.

“So are you here to punish me, then? Strip me of privileges for a week because I refused to stay there and listen to that dogma?” he says, exhaling as Harper takes a seat on the wooden bench.

After a moment, Harper shakes his head. “It’s not about God, Louis. Not for everyone.”

“Bullshit,” he spits. “I was sitting right there and, I don’t know how good your eyes are, but it says God a hell of a lot on that little board that outlines the steps.”

“What I mean to say,” Harper continues, as if Louis hadn’t even spoke, “is that for many, the point of the twelve steps is to put faith in something spiritual. A higher power, but not necessarily God. It’s your task while you’re here to find what that power is to you.”

Louis stares at him. “I don’t believe in any kind of higher power. I’m not spiritual – I don’t want to ask some being floating up in the fucking clouds for forgiveness, because I’d rather ask it of the people down here.”

“That’s good, Louis,” Harper says, head cocked to the side. “That’s very good. Do you feel that you have a lot to be forgiven for?”

“Stop psychoanalysing me – I can tell me when you’re digging your little fingers around in my mind.” Louis takes another angry drag of his cigarette. “I don’t have anything to apologise for,” he clarifies after a moment. “This is who I am, I shouldn’t be sorry about it.”

Harper frowns. “Are you saying that you like the way you are, then? You enjoy being addicted to cocaine?”

“Maybe I do – maybe I like the way it makes me feel. Maybe sometimes I don’t want to be myself, or maybe, getting high is part of who I am.”

“And what about everyone else?” presses the therapist. “What about your family? The people you love? Do you think they accept that as part of who you are?”

Scowling, Louis looks away from Harper. “If they don’t, then they don’t really love me, do they?”

For some reason, that makes Harper sag just slightly, like a puppet that’s had its strings cut – he looks defeated, almost, by the prospect of how much work it’s going to take to help Louis.

“Maybe not,” he concedes eventually before smoothing his palms down the front of his slacks and standing. “Anyway, I came out here to find you – you have a visitor.”

Louis’ heart races, fluttering with excitement. “I do?”

“Harry’s in the visitor’s lounge,” nods Harper.

Without another word, Louis stubs out his cigarette and jogs back inside, taking turns by memory now until he’s pushing open the double doors to the visitor’s lounge. He spots Harry immediately – he’s the only one there, considering visiting hours haven’t actually officially begun. Harry looks good – dressed in tight black jeans and a shirt that’s open down to his navel, he’s the picture of everything that Louis’ been missing for the last ten days.

“Haz,” he croaks out, stumbling forward just as Harry stands up to greet him. His hair is curly, like it’s just been washed, but he’s thrown half of it up into a bun that rests at the back of his head. “Fuck—“

Harry meets him halfway, eyes wide and child-like as they take each other in. It’s nowhere near the longest amount of time that they’ve ever been away from each other, but the fact that they’d left everything on bad terms makes the time seem much longer. Louis walks straight into Harry’s chest, wrapping his arms around Harry’s back and holding him tight, breathing him in – mint, cotton, vanilla.

“I missed you,” Louis whimpers into Harry’s skin, hugging him harder as Harry’s arms press against his shoulder blades, broad and warm through the thin material of Louis’ shirt.

“Yeah, me too,” Harry says, voice wavering. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a dick, I just—I just thought that maybe if you had time—”

“I don’t care – you’re here, and I really don’t care.” Louis releases Harry long enough to grab his hand. “Come up to my room, yeah? We can’t—we can’t talk here. The others will be out soon and we won’t have any privacy.”

“Lou, I’m not supposed—”

“I just told you I don’t care, didn’t I?” Louis says, tugging harder on Harry’s hand. “C’mon, please?”

And maybe it’s because he asked nicely, but Harry relents with a fond roll of his eyes, long legs stumbling a bit to keep up with the quick pace that Louis sets as he drags Harry up the stairs. They don’t talk until they’re safely in Louis’ room, the door closed behind them and the entire floor silent.

“God I’ve missed you,” sighs Louis, allowing himself to fold carefully into Harry once they’re seated on the bed. It takes a moment, but Harry allows them to lie back, Louis curled into his side and nose under Harry’s jaw. “Please don’t leave me here anymore.”

“I have to,” Harry says delicately, fingers tracing patterns on Louis’ back. “You’re doing so well though – you’re already so far into it, Lou, you just need to keep going.”

“I can’t,” he whines, “I don’t like anyone and I don’t like what they’re trying to teach me and I just want us to go home, sleep, and play with Picasso. Is that so wrong?”

Harry’s quiet for a moment, just allowing the two of them to breathe. “No,” he says, “that’s not wrong.”

Louis’ breath is a shudder when he exhales, and he feels close to doing something drastic – yelling or throwing things or hurting himself because he can’t keep doing this.

“I’m not going to change,” he tells Harry honestly.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.” Louis props himself up on his good elbow. “I do, and I know that six weeks in this place isn’t going to change what a lifetime of damage has done, Haz.”

Harry’s face is sad but soft, and he reaches up and cups Louis’ face in both of his hands. “I wish you would just try,” he says before leaning in and kissing Louis, a dry press of lips that makes him miss Harry even more. “I wish you’d try for me.”

A torn sound tears itself from Louis’ throat, because that’s the one thing that Harry can ask of Louis that he will always give. He’d always try for Harry if Harry asked him to, because he knows he owes Harry a lifetime of favours. But staying here and accepting the information that they’re trying to force feed him feels worse than dying – it feels like he’s hurtling towards a telegraph pole at a hundred miles an hour all over again.

“Can you?” Harry presses, kissing Louis again before his lips move along Louis’ jaw, down his throat. “Can you try for me?”

Louis’ eyes flutter closed and he chases the feeling of Harry’s lips on his skin after so long without. He hadn’t even allowed himself to want this, not since he woke up in hospital – it’s too much, and it feels too much like spinning out of control, except now, that’s all Louis wants. He wants to get out of his head if he can’t get out of Castle Craig, and he pushes Harry flat back onto the bed with the blunt edge of his cast before straddling him, the movement fluid from years of practice.

Harry stares up at him, hair fanned around his head and his eyes wide. They’re the colour of the fields beyond Louis’ window and the exact shade of the trees that dot the horizon, and they draw him in because as much as Louis has looked into them before, he doesn’t tire of it. And when Harry’s mouth parts, wet and red, to gasp at air, Louis realises that he’s hard beneath Louis’ arse – the feeling of him trapped in his own tight jeans is too much of an invitation to resist rocking back against him.

The reaction is immediate – a gasp, followed by Harry’s fingers curling around Louis’ thighs, holding him in place.

“Fuck,” Harry groans, hips rocking up to meet Louis’, chasing the friction between them. “I’ve missed this—I’ve missed you—”

“Shut up,” Louis says, his working hand flat against Harry’s chest, feeling the racing pulse of Harry’s heart beneath his fingertips. It’s as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. “You want to keep talking or maybe get to fucking me?”

He knows that that’s what Harry wants – he wants Louis again, because it means that they’re salvageable; that there’s still that spark of chemistry between them. And a part of Louis wants that, too, but a greater part of him wants the distraction it’ll bring – he wants to forget where he is for just a few minutes.

“Yeah—yeah, ‘m gonna,” Harry pants, and his fingers tug at the waistband of Louis’ sweatpants before he digs his hand beneath them. “I’m gonna fucking—“

His words die as he gets his hand around Louis, and suddenly Louis is stopping, too, because—  
“You’re not…?” Harry stops, frowning down at where his hand is inside of Louis’ pants before looking up at Louis.

“I can see that, thank you,” snaps Louis, panicking a little. “Uhm—don’t worry about it, yeah? Just—just keep going, I mean, it’s been a while, I probably just, like, need to warm up.”

Harry smiles shakily, though he’s clearly relieved that there’s an explanation. “Let me help.”

With two broad arms around Louis’ back, Harry gently flips their position, settling Louis back on the bed in one swift movement that’s hindered only slightly by the fact that they’re attempting to fuck on a single bed, and Louis’ arm is in a cast. Still, the change in position is good, and Louis can now unabashedly stare up at Harry, all curls and dimples and green, green eyes. There’s a tightening in Louis’ stomach that’s all lust, curling around and snaking up through his veins, setting him on fire, and he squirms a little when Harry peels off his shirt, fingers dancing all over his chest.

He takes a moment to trace Louis’ tattoos, lightly skimming the it is what it is before kissing the one on Louis’ ribs, his most recent – a shipwreck that had been done over two sittings, and that Harry loved. He takes his time in kissing Louis – fingers pinching his nipples and making Louis’ arch his back, gasping at the feeling – before his hand tugs down Louis’ sweatpants and curls around his cock once again.

“Lou,” Harry says, pulling back from where he’d been about to mark Louis’ neck, and they both glance down the line of their bodies to see that Louis still isn’t hard. “Is—is it me?”

“What? No, god Harry—” Louis squirms and pushes Harry’s hand off, replacing it with his own. 

He feels turned on—that was never really a problem where Harry was concerned – but there’s some kind of disconnect between his brain and his dick. Biting his lip, Louis strokes himself a little, pulling out all the stops – thumbing over the sit, tighter on the upstroke than the down – but it’s pointless.

Frustrated, he pushes Harry off of him with his cast arm before shifting off the bed, yanking up his sweatpants as he goes.

“Can I do something?” Harry asks gently, hovering behind Louis and reaching for him just as Louis shrugs away.

“Yeah, I think I just—want to be alone.” Louis grabs his t-shirt and pulls it on, ignoring the patches of his skin that are still wet from where Harry had kissed him.

“Lou—”

“Go,” he says, raising his voice. “Go away, Harry.”

And Harry’s hurt now – what else is new; Louis can see it in the way Harry’s brow dips and his eyes cloud over as he mentally tries to understand what he’s done wrong or how he’s angered Louis. He should know by now that the problem is always going to be Louis.

“Can’t we just talk about this?” Harry says, tucking his hair behind his ear. “I think, like, if we just talked about it, we might be able to understand it better.”

Louis throws up his hands. “There’s nothing to talk about – I can’t get hard, which, if you haven’t noticed, is just another thing on top of a dozen others that is wrong with me.”

“Louis—”

“No, Harry, I’m done.” Louis feels like a trapped animal – like the walls are closing in and suffocating him all over again. The itch beneath his skin rises, making his fingernails bite into the palm of his hand, and he pushes past Harry, intent on leaving. “I need to just—just get out of here, and all you want to do is keep me here.”

“I want to help you,” Harry says pitifully, following Louis out into the hallway. “Please come back, Lou – please, let me—”

“You can’t fucking help me!” Louis yells, spinning around. “You can’t help me and the sooner you accept that, the happier you’ll be. Go and fucking live your life and stop trying to save mine, because there’s nothing left to save.”

Pushing through a fire escape, Louis climbs and climbs until he’s on the roof and breathing hard, puffing with lungs burning as he looks out over the hills and paddocks of rural Scotland. He feels numb in his fingers and toes, like he’s cold, except the sun is out and he’s sweating everywhere else.

The possible end of his relationship with Harry doesn’t even really register – it’s happened so many times before that Louis has learnt to shut off the part of his brain that cares about hurting people. Instead, he sits on the rooftop and watches the arc of the sun until it chases the darkness to the west, thinking only that he would kill somebody for a line of coke right about now.

***

The days somehow seem longer in Castle Craig when Louis doesn’t anticipate a text or a call or a visit from Harry.

Getting lost in the routine of his treatment plan is relatively easy – he attends group therapy twice a day, has one session with Harper in the afternoons, exercises, swims, writes a bit of bullshit in his journal, eats, sleeps. It feels a lot like sleepwalking as he goes through the motions of it all, like he’s on autopilot and merely coasting along, doing the minimum to get by. And he knows his therapists see it – how could they not, when Louis spends most of his time during sessions lapsing into silence, only bothering to speak when he’s asked a question over a dozen times, and that’s usually more out of irritation than a desire to get better.

Rosie’s always around, too – pulling Louis off into the woods around dusk to sip from her stolen bottles of alcohol or creeping around at night after curfew to peep through their files. Sometimes they look at other people’s, like the woman who constantly rolls her eyes at Rosie or the grumpy old man who tells Louis that a “young man like him shouldn’t be here.” They pry and poke at the files until they dig out something useful – something sordid, some secret that the patient had confessed in therapy – and then Rosie will use it, getting revenge on anyone who insults her. She doesn’t fight fair, but the others have no idea; her insults just seem to hit a little close to home, and they back off. Louis always feels a bit shameful after, like he can’t quite get clean or that the devil is in Hell, taking notes for later.

But Rosie’s his only ally in this place, and he can’t bear to lose anyone else, so he stands behind her and says nothing, avoiding people’s eyes in the halls when he crosses their path alone.  
It’s lonely, is what it is – it’s isolating, and Louis feels himself digging deeper inside of himself to hide, because there’s absolutely nowhere else to go. Without the promise of Harry at the end of his treatment, Louis can’t even see the point in finishing it – he never did this for himself, it was only for Harry. And with that gone, Louis wants to either sleep or get high, but Castle Craig doesn’t allow him the latter, so he sneaks as much of the former in as he can.

“You’re a boring sod today,” Rosie tells him every day over breakfast. “You used to be fun.”

“I also used to fly all over the world and wake up in a new country every day,” he counters dully. “I guess we’ll both just have to settle for what’s in front of us now.”

She leaves him alone after that, knowing that there’s no point in trying to rouse him to action if he’s going to complain the entire time, but honestly, it’s worse when he’s alone.

With nothing but his thoughts, Louis can feel himself circling deeper and musing on the how’s and why’s of everything that’s he done. Now almost three weeks – half way – through his treatment, the end should be in sight, but it isn’t; it feels like time is dragging slower. He knows he should be starting to feel something bearing the face of recovery, but everything has gone of gone astray in his head, like whatever hope he might’ve had left when Harry did. And with that comes old thoughts, creeping back into the light from the shadows that hope banished them to.

His ‘accident.’ The reason why he even did it in the first place. Harry.

Stabbing miserably at his eggs, Louis surrenders himself to think about it – how everything always seems worse when Harry’s not there. Fucking up their relationship, again, seems to invite the demons to dance a little longer over Louis’ grave, because even when he thought he’d had no one, he still had Harry – Harry, who wanted so much for Louis that it was suffocating him. Harry who always tried to see the best in him, who tried to fix Louis even when he hadn’t been half as broken as he is now. Harry—it was always Harry at the bottom of things, and now Louis had lost him, too.

He’s always sort of known that he didn’t deserve Harry – there wouldn’t have been enough days in a year for Louis to come close to that – but Harry wanted him anyway. Harry chose him. And, even if Louis doesn’t feel the need to crash his car like he had a few weeks ago, he knows that the itch for cocaine is still there, and they’re two competing desires – the drugs and Harry. It’s like they cancel each other out somehow, and Louis knows that if he wants Harry, he’s going to have to make some hard decisions in the coming weeks about his recovery. He’ll have to listen to Harper – he’ll have to pay attention in group therapy.

He’s going to have to try, and after failing at the one thing he’d actually tried his hardest to work on – the band – he was terrified that he’d only eventually let Harry down, too.

***

“I must say, Louis, I’m concerned.”

Louis doesn’t stop picking at the hole in the knee of his jeans that’s slowly spreading wider and wider. “Yeah? Why’s that, doc?”

“You seemed very promising when we admitted you,” Harper says, and Louis stares harder at his fingers. “I’d spoken to your mother at length about you – about your career and your drive, but also of your pride and your kindness. She seemed adamant that you would do well here.”

The mention of his mum makes Louis’ stomach turn over – he hasn’t seen her since he left England three weeks ago, and while he’s definitely gone longer, it feels uncomfortable to know that they’re on uncertain terms. He’s never been good at upsetting her, or even disobeying her – as a kid, he’d always apologise quickly, taking on extra chores like washing or minding his sisters to get back in her good graces. It got harder when he left – harder to make up for all the wrong things he did, because he could only give her money and none of his time, and that wasn’t what she wanted.

Louis might’ve made it in everyone else’s eyes, but he was still constantly disappointing her somehow.

“Yeah, well, guess she doesn’t know me as well as she thought she did,” Louis grumbles, annoyed.

“I doubt that very much,” Harper presses. “From the way she talked about you, it seemed that you were close. Friends, even.”

Glancing up, Louis fits the therapist with a scathing look before turning his attention back to his jeans. “She had me when she was young to a deadbeat arsehole who left the two of us. So, yeah, you could say that we were friends – but we were all each other had for a lot of my childhood.”

“And that changed, did it?” he sounds genuinely curious. “Was it when your mother remarried?”

“No, Mark never came between us,” Louis says, shrugging. “He was—good for her. Good to us.”  
“Good to you,” Harper adds, and Louis nods after a second’s hesitation.

“I took his name – he adopted me,” Louis explains. “I never—I hadn’t ever really thought I was missing anything, not having a dad. It was me and mum, and that was good, but Mark—I don’t know,” he says, lips twisting in thought. “Guess it made me think that I could have both.”

“Was their divorce hard?”

Louis laughs bitterly. “Happened right as I was auditioning for The X Factor, so, yeah, you could say that.” He tears a chunk of fabric out of jeans, rolling it between his fingers. “I was so—so frustrated that I wasn’t there, but at the same time, they’d be on the phone to me every night, telling me not to waste the opportunity.”

“Do you feel responsible?” Harper asks, unfolding his legs and recrossing the opposite ones. “Do you feel as though you could’ve changed the outcome of their marriage if you had’ve been there?”

“No,” Louis says immediately, looking up at Harper, accusatory. The man’s face gives him pause – open, honest. Non-judgemental. “I don’t know. Maybe. I guess I thought that, like, my being London put pressure on them that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.”

“It’s not uncommon for children of divorce to feel as though they are – directly or indirectly – responsible for their parents’ divorce,” Harper tells him gently. “What was it like returning back home when you finished the program?”

And it’s odd to hear someone ask that question, because Louis had thought that everyone knew their story by now – but the therapist’s face is clear and open, a blank canvas inviting Louis to paint upon. Maybe it’s because he’s been trapped in Castle Craig for too long, or because he’s been deprived of someone to genuinely talk to for so long, but he finds himself wanting to tell this person everything – just tear out his brain and give it away, hoping that someone else can make sense of it.

“I didn’t go home,” Louis says, smiling sadly. “I went back for a day to get my things, and then I moved to London with—with Harry.” Sighing, Louis sits back in his chair, abandoning the hole in his jeans. “I couldn’t face the silence or my sister’s faces, even though I knew that my mum wanted and probably needed me. I just—I couldn’t do it anymore.”

Harper nods, sympathetic but not patronising. “London – what was that like?”

“Exciting – new. Me and Harry got this place with, like, no heating, and we had so much space—it felt like we owned an entire planet after being crammed together with the other boys in the X Factor house.”

The man across from him smiles, his glasses tilting a little askew at the action. “Can we talk about that? Your bandmates?”

Louis nods, not seeing any harm in that – Zayn might be a sore point, but there’s no harm in thinking about the early days; the days when they lived and smiled and enjoyed what they were doing.

“So I know about Harry,” says Harper. “But what of the others? What are they like?”

Louis considers it for a moment, bringing up each of them in his mind’s eye. “Funny. Loyal. Patient.” Shrugging, Louis brings one knee up to his chest, wrapping his arms around it. “Liam’s—I don’t know, he’s good, y’know? He always means well, and he’s funny, and he puts up with a lot of my shit. Niall’s funny, and so, like, unique, you know? He’s got all these weird little things that make him Niall, and I like that about him. He is who he is, and he never, like, allowed us to forget that.”

“That’s three.”

“Yeah.” Louis sighs, resting his chin on his forearm. “Zayn was—my best friend, beside Harry, of course. He just—he got me, and he didn’t ask questions like the others. And I guess that a lot of things went unspoken because of that, but I never thought we missed anything. He just—he was always on my side, y’know? I knew he’d always be on my side, no matter what I did.”

To Louis’ surprise, Harper doesn’t press about Zayn, he just nods and moves on.

“And what about young Harry?” he says, smiling across at Louis gently. “What was it like in those early days?”

“Good, really good.”

Louis can feel himself smile a little too, remembering the way they’d hate the space that their new apartment gave them and always crawl into each other’s beds. It wasn’t that they weren’t already sleeping together most nights, but nothing had been official – they’d danced around their feelings until Harry had come right out and asked Louis if they could date. After that, it seemed that the world finally fell into place for him – having Harry and the band and an upcoming tour made him feel invincible, like he’d been given the keys to the kingdom. And he tells Harper all of this – of the way he and Harry had easily slipped into a relationship that was strong from the word go; of the way tour life was weird and fun and nerve-wracking. He talks of the way he’d been unsure of his voice, of the extra pressure when it came time to record for their album, of the way he felt himself being moulded into a certain shape by their management.

“And do you think you’ve broken that mould?” Harper asks when Louis trail off in thought, and he looks up at the bald man.

“I… I don’t know,” Louis admits. “I kind of lost where their Louis ended and my own began. I guess-- I had more freedom toward the end than I did before. I got to make more decisions and wear more of what I wanted, but I guess I never really broke the mould until the band ended.”

“Do you think we could talk more about the band in our next session? It’s just that our hour is up and, if I’m not mistaken, you have a yoga class to attend.” Harper smiles as Louis glances in disbelief at the clock. “But this was good, Louis – it was nice to finally talk.”

“I ranted about my childhood and the start of our band – nothing you couldn’t find in one of our biographies, if I’m honest.”

Laughing, Harper stands and walks Louis to the door. “As tempting as that is, I would much rather hear it from you.”

“We have an audiobook,” Louis suggests, grinning.

“Now that I might look into.”

Louis walks out and, with one last glance over his shoulder at his therapist, heads back to his room to change, feeling somehow lighter than he has in a long while.

***

Harper doesn’t let up over the next few days – in every session he asks Louis questions, getting him to unravel, piece by piece, until Louis is almost preparing what he wants to say each night before his upcoming session. They’re usually easy questions, prompting Louis to talk about things – his family, life on the road, music, travelling. And it doesn’t feel like he’s talking to a therapist, because Harper never asks stupid questions like, ‘and how does that make you feel?’ – he knows better now. He lets Louis talk, nodding and prodding and smiling in all the right moments, eager to know and understand all about Louis’ life.

And, in turn, Louis finds himself recounting stories he hasn’t thought of in years – jokes and pranks from on the road, but also the quieter moments; times when he’d find himself alone with Niall in the bus lounge and they’d talk over a game of FIFA or when he’d sit on a hotel roof in Spain watching the sun rise with Zayn sitting beside him, still as a statue and painted in golden hues from the new sun. Recalling these things that he’d thought he’d lost fills Louis with nostalgia for a time that’s now passed – the band is over, more than finished, and he’s only now realising how hard it is to accept that. There hadn’t really been time before – they packed their stuff and came home, but with a flurry of business meetings and contracts being shoved under their noses, Louis hadn’t really had time to process.

To grieve.

Harper doesn’t flinch when Louis starts crying one session. He’d been in the thick of talking about selling out the O2 arena for six consecutive nights and it’d just happened – unbridled pride one moment, heart-wrenching agony the next. He cries as he talks about his family coming to watch him sing; his grandmother, earplugs and all, standing close to the front, her eyes never leaving him. He tells Harper about his mother holding up the twins, so young back then, allowing them to get a better glimpse of their big brother in his element. 

“I’m scared I’ll never get that back again,” Louis had said, wiping his cheeks with the back of his hand. “I’m scared I don’t deserve it.”

“The only thing stopping you is you.”

That had stuck with Louis, those handful of words said offhandedly but with such a conviction that he can’t help but think there’s something to them. Louis isn’t under any illusions about his abilities as a singer – he was never strong enough on his own, and without the others, he’d be nothing. But he’s got something; some spark of talent that, when combined with another voice, can make something half-decent. It doesn’t make the loss of the band any easier, but it’s something – a hope, maybe, that there’s something salvageable between the five of them.

Eventually he talks about song writing, too – his best songs, the ones he’d rewrite or change around; the ones he wishes he had’ve sang when he had the chance. Harper asks him to write down his favourite lyrics in his patient journal, and Louis does, pen flying across the paper with a sudden eagerness to get them out of his head.

Unsurprisingly, they’re all the lyrics that he’d wrote for Harry.

“You’re very talented, just like your mother said,” Harper said, smiling at Louis as he handed the paper back. “Don’t waste it.”

That, too, eases a little of the grief off Louis’ shoulders, because he had given the band his all on every album – each song that he wrote conjures a little pride in his chest. He couldn’t have done any better with the time he was given.

***

“I’m leaving.”

Louis looks up from his porridge, still half asleep, and glances at Rosie. She’s got eyeliner smudged all around her dark eyes, and her nose ring catches the morning light.

“What?”

“I’m leaving,” she repeats, pushing around the fruit on her plate. “In two days. I’m being released.”

His brain is sluggish from lack of sleep – he’d been up most of the night writing in his journal, hastily scribbling down thoughts - not only to bring up with Harper for his session later but, surprisingly, some new lyrics.

Now all of that is forgotten as he openly stares at Rosie. “You can’t,” he says, numb, not really thinking about it. “I mean—I don’t understand. How?”

“I started my treatment program weeks ahead of you, sweetheart – I’m practically overdue,” she says, but Louis can tell that, somehow, she’s not too keen on leaving. There’s some kind of sarcastic weight to her words that Louis knows all too well – he’s used it more times than he can count.

“Do you—do you think you’re ready to go?”

For a second, her bravado drops away to reveal a scared woman, nervous about the world beyond the manor house of Castle Craig – someone unsure if they’re just going to fall back into old habits the moment they get home. But a second later, her walls come back up, and she’s Rosie again – loud, brash, bold.

“More than ready,” she says, smiling thinly. “Been too fuckin’ long in this posh prison. I’m gonna get me driver to go through the McDonald’s drive thru.”

Louis laughs. “Have one on me, yeah?”

That makes the smile waver on her face, because it’s only just now sinking in for the two of them that this – this tenuous, rocky friendship that was built on lies and mischief – is ending. Louis, truthfully, will miss her, but there’s also a part of him that sort of never wants to see her again – there’s something too Zayn-like about her that unsettles him every time she smiles. It’s like a knife that is twisted and turned in his stomach, and even though it hurts, he can’t pull away – he misses Zayn and, perhaps, he’ll miss Rosie too.

“Not that I care but, like—we could do something in London, when you’re out. You can bring your chequebook and buy some of my paintings.”

Laughing, Louis nods. “I might do that, unless they’re shit. I’m not buying any of that splattered paint on a canvas bullshit – that’s not art.”

“Bring your husband, then – you said he was the one with taste.”

He doesn’t say that he’s not even dating Harry anymore, despite the rock that feels like its sinking through his stomach, but smiles at Rosie. “Maybe,” is all he says, going back to his porridge before adding, “I will miss you, though.”

Rosie takes a bite of her apple. “The feeling is not mutual, Tomlinson.”

***

After talking so consistently with Harper over the last week, Louis is almost unsettled when he receives a note to say that his session is cancelled that afternoon – it reads:

 _With apologies—_  
I have an emergency to attend to. I have instead organised for you a session (of another kind!) that I hope you find just as therapeutic as ours. The gardens will be your host.  
Take care,  
Dr. Sam Harper.

Frowning, Louis sets the note aside and continues with his day, half-sleeping through the informational lecture which is today dedicated to discussing the third of the Twelve Steps: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Louis tunes out, rather than leaves – he can’t afford to be seen as actively antagonistic anymore, not with his progress with Harper.

With the news that Rosie’s leaving, Louis’ thoughts have all day been more frequently turning to what he’s going to do when she’s gone – how long can he stay here, riding on the feeling of unburdening himself, and the foolish hope that, maybe, he can get Harry back? Not only that, but more than ever before, he wants to get high – the resurfacing of good memories brings with them the thoughts of the old and the bad. The pain of losing his band and his best friend is constantly fresh and always at the forefront of his mind, like a terrible loop of all the shit things they’d said to one another before going their separate ways.

Above it all is the awful things he’d said to Harry – not just of late, but further back; little quips and insults that he’d thrown around when he’d been hurting. And he might not’ve seen it then, but he does now – the flash of hurt in Harry’s eyes, the way he’d withdraw from Louis like he’d been burned. He’s a terrible person, and that’s not easily forgiven, no matter what Louis does here at Castle Craig.

To atone for the last five years would be impossible, and Louis just—really wishes he could get high for just an hour.

The session draws to a close and they all stand up, milling around to pitch personal questions to the therapist while others talk among themselves. Louis bows out of the room, walking straight out the front door and into the sunshine. He’s itching for a smoke – something to fill his head apart from the hour-long sermon about how God has the ability to turn their lives around if they let. Grey clouds hover overhead, but not the kind that promise rain – they simply marching across the sky in dark uniform, unsynchronised and unruly.

“Tommo!” comes a shout, and Louis – halfway between lighting a cigarette – glances over to see Niall, standing up from a bench, waving.

His hair is still blonde, catching the dulled sunlight, and his face is unabashed joy, like he might split at the seams with how happy he is to see Louis. He knows the feeling.

“Holy shit,” Louis breathes, walking across to Niall and pulling him into a hug, which Niall returns fiercely, squeezing Louis tightly.

They sort of just hang onto each for a long moment, Louis burying himself into Niall’s shoulder like he can capture a part of him. It’s good and warm and solid – all the things that Louis has been missing about Harry – and he lets himself sag a little vulnerably in Niall’s arms. He’s missed his friends; he hadn’t even realised that they’d known he was here but, knowing Harry, he’d probably shared the news discretely not long after they arrived in Scotland.

“How are ya?” Niall asks, pulling back and holding Louis at arm’s length, blue eyes scanning him happily. His cheeks are red at the tops.

“Good, yeah, I’m—good.” Louis sort of wants to hug Niall again.

“Bloody Scotland, eh?” he says, laughing as he claps Louis on the back and shakes his head at the size of the house. “What’s it called again?”

“Castle Craig.”

Niall grins. “Castle Craic, more like.”

“Not quite,” Louis says tightly, grimacing before glancing over his shoulder. “You want to walk? You can’t smoke this close to the house,” he explains.

They walk through the grounds of Castle Craig, Niall putting a pair of sunglasses on and shoving his hands in his pockets as they do so. It’s weird, Louis thinks, to see Niall again – it feels like they’ve been apart for years, rather than just a few months; the last time he’d properly seen the other boy was when they’d gone their separate ways at Heathrow. Despite what they’d just been through – the cancellation of the rest of their tour, the potential demise of the band – it hadn’t been an emotional goodbye. There’d been paparazzi and swarms of fans, all eager to get a glimpse at the four boys who couldn’t hold themselves together without a fifth, and they’d been ushered to separate cars and spread across the country as quickly as possible.

The reality of what they’d just gone through only seemed to hit them later, when they’d spend more time talking in the early hours of the morning in hushed, nervous voices than they did in regular, waking hours – like they were scared of even thinking about it during daylight.

The last time Louis had spoken to Niall, he’d been resigned about the band but excited about other prospects – and that had only really contributed to Louis’ sense of loss, because if any of them were committed to One Direction, it was Niall; the band had been his life. But he’s moved on, and when Louis looks across at him, he doesn’t see someone broken – he sees someone strong. Happy, even.

“Harry told you I was here, then,” Louis says as they walk, kicking a stone and watching the grass swallow it up.

“Yeah – should he not have done that?”

Louis shrugs it off. “It’s fine. It’s not, like, a secret or anything.”

“You don’t have to be ashamed that you’re here, Lou – it looks like a really good place.” Niall looks back over his shoulder at the manor house, which is slowly disappearing behind a hill. “I spoke to Sam, your therapist. He seems like a nice guy – funny.”

“Funny?” Louis repeats, dubious. “I wouldn’t go that far, but—yeah, he’s alright.”

“He helping you, then?”

He shrugs again. “I don’t really know if any of this is helping.”

They sit beneath a tree out of the sun which overlooks an extensive part of the grounds that Castle Craig owns. There’s nothing as far as the eye can see – no buildings or cars or offices, just trees and green fields and, in one of the paddocks, some horses roaming around. It’s tranquil – it reminds Louis of home in Hampstead, where every morning he’d wake up and sit on the porch with Picasso, smoking steadily until Harry woke and made them breakfast.

“So, like,” Niall starts, stopping for a moment and glancing at Louis, “maybe I’m a bad friend but I didn’t know you were, like, addicted to anything.” Louis stares ahead at the green fields, and Niall ploughs on. “I knew you and Zayn did stuff together – drugs, or whatever – but not… seriously. I thought it was just sometimes, for fun and the like.”

“It was,” Louis says, fighting the urge to just change the subject. That’s the one thing that Harper’s taught him, at least – sometimes telling a story from start to finish can be satisfying. The only problem is that Louis doesn’t know how to do that with people who aren’t his therapist – he doesn’t know if they’d even care, of if they’d care too much. “I guess—that was how it started.”

Niall’s face is open and receptive, curious but not demanding, and Louis quickly glanced away. There’s so much that Niall doesn’t know – there’s things that no one knows – that terrify Louis from the sheer prospect of them finding out, eventually. He decides to tell part of the story.

“It’s not his fault that I’m here, because we both used them – drugs. Cocaine,” Louis says, the words sticking to his tongue, awkward and heavy. “I guess—I liked some more than others, and when he left, I just—upped my intake to cope. Those shows, Niall – those last few shows…”

“Yeah,” Niall says quietly, nodding in understanding. “They were rough.”

“Right, and like—I just felt like I couldn’t be here, but I had to be y’know? So I just—got out of my own head in the only way I knew how, and that just… continued into the break.” Louis runs a hand through his hair and scrubs his eyes. “It’s no one’s fault but my own, I just wish I hadn’t gotten myself stuck here in order to figure that out.”

Niall, pulling clumps of grass from the soil, says, “You still want to use though, right? Like—you’re still addicted, aren’t you?”

The way he says it – innocent, quiet – makes Louis feel guilty, because cocaine’s all he’s been able to think about for the last week, especially since Harry left. It’s like he’s made no progress at all in the three weeks he’s been here, and that sucks, but he also can’t help the way he feels. Maybe he’s just meant to be an addict.

“Yeah.” Louis wiggles his fingers inside his cast, testing their strength – he can’t wait til he’s free of it, the bulky, ugly thing that prohibits him from using his arm at all. It’s been the least of his problems, really, but he only now realises how irritating it is.

Niall’s quiet for a while, pulling at the grass and shredding it between his blunt-nailed fingers, lips pursed in a way that means he’s upset, but unwilling to talk about it. Louis feels guilty about that too, because Niall’s come all this way to see him, only to hear that Louis’ no better than the last time they’d seen one another. He wonders what kind of false promises Harry has been feeding him over the phone.

“Are you going to get better?” Niall asks eventually, not looking up.

And Louis can’t lie – not to Niall, of all people, because as much as Louis wants to protect him, he knows that Niall deserves more than that.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “Maybe.”

“Do you even want to get better?”

“I don’t know, Niall,” Louis grits out, frustrated. “I don’t know what I want anymore.”

“I just would’ve thought that, like, almost dying in your accident would’ve made you more eager to live, that’s all.”

Louis looks at him sharply. “Who says I want to die?”

“You can’t want to live very much if you’re snorting coke in order to make it through the day, Lou.” Niall’s eyes are pleading, and Louis wonders how anyone could ever hurt him – he wants to renounce every single wrong thing he’s done when he looks at Niall, because he knows that Niall only wants the best for him. It’s pure concern, undiluted except for that one wish, and Louis realises he’s missed that. “It’s a bloody waste of a life if you keep doing this.”

“Now you sound like Harry.”

“Maybe Harry’s onto something, then,” Niall says, voice hard.

The sit in terse silence for a few minutes, Louis using his good hand to slide a finger inside of his cast to try and reach an itchy spot. He fails and tries again with a stick lying to his right.

“I am trying,” he says reluctantly. “I’m working on things with Harper, but I can’t make any promises.”

Niall seems to accept that, nodding a few times and pushing his sunglasses further up his nose. “That’s good – that’s all we want.”

“We?”  
“The lads – Liam’s comin’ up to see you soon, too, I think – he’s just trying to get the time off.” Niall tosses a few blades of grass into the wind and watches as they float a few paces before collapsing back to the earth. “And Zayn—”

“Don’t,” Louis says quickly, cutting him off. “Don’t. I just—I don’t want him to know, let alone to come here…”

“You sure? He’s your best mate.”

“Was,” Louis reminds him. “That ended when all this started, so. I just—don’t want to see him.”

“Yeah, alright,” Niall says, defeated. “I’ll let them know.”

It gets easier after that to just talk to Niall as he would’ve if they’d been anywhere else but a rehabilitation hospital – easy to laugh about things, talk shit about music or movies or games. Niall fills him in with the latest scores on football, and Louis tells him about some of the people he’s met while at Castle Craig, dancing around describing Rosie lest Niall see right through him.

And when the gong sounds from the house, signalling the end of an hour’s allotment, Louis is genuinely sad to see Niall go, because for an hour, he’d been allowed to feel like a regular person again. There was no treatment plan, no sermons about abstinence and steps toward surrendering his recovery to God – there was just them and the memories they shared, and it had felt good. Normal, even.

“Niall,” Louis calls out as Niall is about to climb into his car, a hulking black SUV that looks rather intimidating and strangely out of place on Castle Craig’s lawn. “Do you miss it? The band – us?”

He looks confused for a moment, frowning at Louis like he’s said something wrong. “Of course I do,” he says, incredulous. “I miss you and the other boys every day. I hate not, like, waking up and having you all there – sort of feels wrong, don’t it?”

It feels like whatever has been constricting his chest loosens at hearing that.

“Yeah – it’s not the same.” Louis gives Niall a smile before rapping his knuckles on the hood of the car. “Thanks for, like—coming to visit.”

“S’alright. I love Scotland.” Niall gets inside and winds down his window. “And Lou?”

“Mmm?”

“Do try,” he says, earnest and gentle, and Louis can’t help but agree, nodding once before Niall gives him a smile and drives away.

Louis watches the SUV until it disappears round a bend, and then he turns back to the manor, wondering if Sam Harper isn’t a genius after all.

***

Rosie leaves without fanfare a day later, and surprisingly, some people do care that she’s going.  
Louis’ witnessed patients graduating from the program before – watched as they hugged their therapists, thanked the staff, and cried on the shoulders of their friends, promising to keep in touch after they’re all out. Somehow, he’d thought that with Rosie, it would be different – that she’d leave in a blaze of fire, telling everyone to fuck themselves while smiling at Louis knowingly.

It turns out to be quite sentimental – she hugs her therapist goodbye, and the two exchange some quiet words with Rosie nodding and smiling. She even speaks to a few of the patients that have gathered in the foyer of the house, looking a bit teary eyed – Louis hadn’t even realised she had any friends except for him in Castle Craig, but. There they are, wishing her well and telling her to call them when she has another gallery exhibition.

When she finally gets to Louis, there’s a shift in her gaze, like maybe she’s waking up from a dream. Rosie hugs him tightly, the point of her chin digging into his shoulder while her fingernails bite into his back, but they’re all welcome marks of friendship – they’re all Louis will have in five minutes’ time.

“I didn’t want to get all sappy on you,” Rosie says into his neck, “but-- fuck it. You’re an arsehole and your band is a bit shit but I love you and I love them and thank you for being my friend.”

Louis laughs, squeezing her tighter. “Thanks. And—same, y’know? Thanks for making this place bearable.”

“What’ll you do without me?” Rosie sighs, pulling back from Louis and wiping at her eyes suspiciously.

“I’ll just have to work harder so I can get out of here faster,” he says, smiling at her and trying to memorise her features – nose ring, dark eyes, perpetually smudged eyeliner, dark skin. She’s beautiful in the same way Zayn is – fierce confidence in who they are and what they want – and Louis is going to miss that. “I need to buy some of your art, remember?”

“Not you, you twat,” and she punches him in the shoulder, smiling wetly. “Your husband. I ain’t sellin’ nothing to you.”

Laughing, Louis hugs her again, hoping against hope that Rosie’s okay out there – for all her talk and all her bravado about how ridiculous the twelve steps are, he hopes that she’s internalised something from her time here.

“I left you my stash in the woods,” she whispers into his ear before they can part. “Enjoy it.”

He doesn’t get to thank her for that – her car arrives, and she’s being shepherded out the door by the staff. Louis gives her one final smile before she disappears, probably on the way to get her burger at the McDonald’s drive thru.

And when the dust settles and the routine at Castle Craig is re-established, albeit minus one patient, it’s uncomfortably lonely, Louis realises. It’s not that he spent all day with Rosie before, but even the promise of her company at meal times or trading sarcastic eye rolls during the informational lectures made the day more bearable.

Now, alone with his thoughts, Louis ends up writing four pages in his journal, detailing all the things he liked about Rosie and how he’s going to miss her. It’s almost stereotypically healthy, he thinks, finishing his entry with a sigh – he’s starting to adapt and internalise the behaviours taught to him. But it feels good in a way to get it out; to write down all his feelings and know that no one else is going to read them.

***

He’s in his fourth week at the rehabilitation centre before he talks to Harry again.

“I think you’re at a stage where we should begin involving family and friends,” Harper suggests calmly. “Loved ones.”

Louis, who had just finished telling him about the last tour and the disintegration of the band post-Zayn, openly stares at Harper. They both know who he’s talking about.

“Why?” he asks, his previous candour disappearing and replaced by something colder; harder. “I thought I was here because I’m the one with the problem.”

“As glad as I am that we’ve worked to get you to a place where you can accept that your addiction is part of you,” Harper says, “we also try to bring in loved ones to these sessions. Addiction doesn’t just affect you, Louis – addiction affects the people around you, too.”

“I know that,” he snaps. “But I don’t think he needs counselling, do you? He seemed perfectly fucking fine with walking out, so.”

Harper doesn’t even bother reminding Louis that he was the one who walked out on Harry – Louis had been forced to give up that little nugget of information after Harper kept asking why Harry hadn’t been back to visit.

“We need to get you two communicating again,” he says instead. “During your shared sessions, we’ll help construct some tools to do that, which will be a great help when you go home.”

It’s the first time that Harper’s mentioned the fact that Louis is, in fact, going to go home eventually – their sessions had always been geared toward getting to the root of the problem and talking about it in painstaking detail. Why Louis felt abandoned by the people in his life. Why he felt suffocated when people tried to stay with him. Why he was constantly self-sabotaging everything good that crossed his path. But all of this – all the talking and all of the thinking – had seemed theoretical, like Louis was analysing the thoughts and feelings of someone else. Now he realises that it’s practical, too – he’s supposed to leave and take all of this knowledge with him and try to be better.

“I don’t know if I’m even going back home with him,” Louis points out. “We—didn’t end on good terms.”

“How do you know that things have even ended?”

“Because I said they were,” Louis says. “I said—I said we were over.”

Harper’s eyebrows rise behind his round spectacles. “Last I checked, Louis, a relationship takes two. Perhaps, to Harry, things aren’t resolved.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Louis says immediately. “If he thought we were still together, he would’ve come to see me. I know what he’s like.”

“I think you need to try and see things from his perspective – it’s the oldest trick in the book for communicating well within relationships. Try to see what he’s been seeing for the last four or five weeks.”

At first, Louis hesitates, wondering if this is another one of Harper’s mind games that always end with Louis crying from some repressed memory of when he was seven and his father forgot his birthday (again). But no one knows Harry like Louis does, and he feels that it’s safe territory from Harper – he can’t manipulate Louis’ knowledge of Harry because Louis has been sure to keep all of that to himself.

So he does. He closes his eyes and allows himself to float away from his own body and travel back in time to his accident, and then he inhabits Harry’s body. Louis wonders how and when Harry got the call that Louis was in hospital; he’d never thought to ask. Was it Jay? Was it through Louis’ emergency contact information? Shame spreads through Louis as he imagines Harry’s reaction to the news – he wonders how Harry stopped crying long enough to get to the hospital. The countless sleepless nights spent in the waiting room, only to be denied visiting rights by Louis, pile up, and Louis always imagines Harry going home once visiting hours end. Their house is dark and Picasso’s at Anne’s, and he – Harry – is alone there, the place silent.

It’s not that Louis hadn’t cared about Harry when he’d made the accident happen – he just hadn’t considered it; there hadn’t been time. But imagining it now, however inaccurate, hurts, and he promptly moves on to when Louis is released from hospital and gets high again.

While the memory is fuzzy from his own perspective, in Harry’s it’s crystal clear – coming in to find Louis slumped on the bed, pale and smiling like death was an old friend. He can imagine Harry talking him through the nonsense he spouts, patient and worried and probably crying, because that’s all Louis seemed capable of making him do at the time.

And the decision that changed everything – the phone call to Jay.

Louis had hated Harry for that for weeks, because it was what brought him to Castle Craig, but imagining the impossible decision that Harry’d had to make, Louis isn’t so sure that his hatred was justified. Harry never would have betrayed him like that easily; it would’ve killed him to dial that number and know that Louis’ future from thereon was out of their control – because Jay wouldn’t simply sit around and let Louis make his own decisions. She’d make the hard ones for him, and she had – she’d chosen Castle Craig and shipped him off, though Harry had of course been there the entire time.

He looks at himself through Harry’s eyes – the cast on his arm, the fading cuts and bruises on his skin, the pale colour of his skin. Harry must’ve been worried sick, though Louis can’t remember Harry ever really saying that – he can’t remember Harry saying much at all those few days that it took to organise Louis’ admission. There was the one instance of Louis waking up to Harry crying in bed beside him, but other than that, Harry seemed to hold himself together well. It was a façade, of course – Louis had just never bothered to care.

Louis’ lack of attention to the way Harry felt persisted during his stay at Castle Craig, and seeing all of it through Harry’s eyes made Louis feel sick with himself. He’d only continued to shut Harry out until he needed him – until the reality of what he was being forced to do hit him, and then he begged Harry not to do it. Louis himself had put Harry in that awkward position, of having to chose between Louis’ health and Louis’ love, and he’d chosen the former. He’d done everything he could to make sure that Louis was happy.

The guilt was so strong that Louis couldn’t hold the illusion anymore, and he swam back into his own consciousness, good hand balled into a fist by his side. When he opened his eyes, Harper was watching him softly.

“I don’t—” Louis’ voice cracked. “I don’t think I’ve—I’ve been communicating very well.”

“Why?”

“I shut him out. I asked him to do things that he couldn’t.” Louis wondered if he should just start writing these all down so that he can apologise to Harry later. “I made things that were my problems, his problems, and then I blamed him for them all.”

“And do you think it would be helpful to try and resolve these issues?”

Louis’ eyes feel unfocused as he shrugs. “I don’t think he’ll want to talk to me.”

“I’m happy to invite him, if that’s easier,” Harper says. “But I really do think you both would benefit from a structured environment where you can speak openly.”

What possesses Louis to agree can only be attributed to some higher power, one that Louis’ been denying his whole life yet, in this moment, seems more real than ever, because his head seems to nod of its own volition.

“I’ll make the call, then.”

***

Harry arrives at Castle Craig the next day, and Louis spots him from the window of his bedroom. He’d been having Quiet Hour which, at the rehab centre, means journal writing, daily monitoring checks, and a potential nap. The routine for Louis is one of comfort now – he knows when he can rest and when he has to be present; he knows what to expect when the gong sounds at 10am and when it sounds again at midday. He misses Rosie for the diversity and excitement that she brought to the house, but Louis can’t deny that the structure established in her wake is good, too.

Stepping out of his car, which is a rental, Louis notes, he sees that Harry’s opted for something less perfect popstar and more effortlessly stylish. He’s got on a heavy coat that has fake fur at the collar, which is concealing the bright green of his favourite Packers hoodie. The sight of it makes Louis’ stomach clench – it’s his favourite hoodie to steal from Harry – before he sees that Harry’s wearing a pair of boots that he usually calls his ‘country boots’; they’re brown and broken in, the kind that lace up like Doc Martens but aren’t quite as alternative. He looks good, hair curling and tucked behind one ear, and Louis just—aches.

Somewhere between the end of the band and Louis’ accident, he lost Harry, and he’s only really been able to see that now, because he wouldn’t have been able to do what he did with his car if things had been fine. And no amount of journal entries or spiritual journey’s with Harper will let him into Harry’s head any better than simply asking would. But he’s afraid – afraid of the answer, afraid that the truth is so irredeemable that Harry just straight up leaves for good.

He’s scared that whatever progress he’s made has been made too late.

Louis watches Harry shake hands with Peter, who comes to greet all visitors, before he’s led inside and out of Louis’ view. Nerves make any attempt at resting impossible, and he ends up pacing back and forth, chain smoking as he does so, until the gong sounds and they’re let out for lunch.

He doesn’t see Harry there either, though that’s to be expected, as even the staff are usually missing from lunch meals – but that doesn’t stop Louis from picking at his food, barely even realising where he is. All he can think is that Harry’s somewhere, talking about him to Harper; Harry’s probably telling them all that he wants nothing to do with Louis because he’s realised in the last two weeks that things are better without Louis there; he’s probably even saying that—  
It takes effort for Louis to realise and acknowledge his negative thought patterns; it’s something he’s been working on with Harper. Coming out of it and stepping back feels like he’s trying to swim with his clothes on – heavy, sluggish – even though the dark thoughts roll on. And Louis tries to remember what Harper had said about them being controllable if Louis accepts that they’re there, but also to try and find why they’re there and deal with that, instead. Musing over his sandwich, Louis considers that the negative thoughts are there because Harry is – and that Harry represents the unknown.

Most of Louis’ days are structured; predictable. Harry is a chaotic outside force that’s about to disrupt everything, and, Louis acknowledges, he’s scared that he won’t be able to rebuild what Harry inevitably destroys when he leaves again.

Exhaling, Louis nods to himself. Progress.

He doesn’t try to delay his therapy session once he’s eaten – in fact, he almost welcomes it, given the state of his head since he saw Harry’s car roll up. He’s missed Harry, that’s undeniable, and despite the way he’d ended things he just wants to see Harry again.

Harper’s with Harry already when Louis climbs the stairs and knocks twice on the door. He’s called in, and two sets of eyes turn to him – but Louis can only seek out Harry’s.

Up close, he looks tired – like maybe he hasn’t slept in a few weeks, or like he’s been sick, and Louis hopes that isn’t because of him, because the thought makes his heart slam against his ribs with the need to take of Harry.

“Pease have a seat, Louis,” Harper says, indicating Louis’ usual armchair, which has been shifted over to allow for a second.

He sits, glancing between Harper and Harry, who stares at Louis openly, like he’s a stranger, or like he’s trying to do the same thing that Louis is: note everything that’s different since the last time they saw each other.

“Right,” and they both turn back to the therapist, eyes skittering away like naughty children, “I thought that a joint session between the two of you would be good. Louis has made amazing progress over the last four weeks,” says Harper, and he has the courtesy not to look solely at Harry when he says that, like Louis is some kind of puppy in obedience school, “And I think that he would really benefit from opening some more communication channels with the people in his life.”

Harry’s nodding, one leg crossed over the other like he’s a parent at a parent-teacher conference. “What, like—” He clears his throat, and with a completely straight face says, “What kind of channels?”

The innuendo makes Louis laugh, a sudden burst of it tearing from his chest and, just before he ducks his head, he sees Harry smiling down into his lap, too.

Harper seems oblivious. “Discussing in a safe and structured environment some aspects of your relationship that are vital to Louis’ recovery and continuing abstinence from chemical dependency.”

“Basically we need to talk through our shit so I don’t get upset and snort coke,” Louis translates, grinning at the patient-but-irritated look on Harper’s face at Louis’ bluntness.

Harry’s nodding, though, a thoughtful pout on his face. “Alright, yeah—that sounds good.”

“Good,” Harper says, holding his hands and, for maybe the first time in weeks, he picks up his pens and allows it to hover above a notepad. Louis scowls at it. “Maybe we should start at the end—before Louis came to us here at Castle Craig, what would you each say was the point at which things changed between you?”

Louis can feel his palms begin to sweat, and he thinks back to when Harry had asked him if his accident had actually been an accident.

“Harry?” prompts Harper gently.

“Uhm,” and Harry tugs at his bottom lip in thought, decidedly not looking at Louis. “Probably—“

“There’s no wrong answer.”

Harry nods, tucking his hair back behind his ear that the motion has dislodged. “Right—uhm. Maybe when the band—ended? That’s when I, like, really started to notice—changes.”

“Can you expand on that?” Harper asks, and Louis sort of really wants to staple his fucking lips together so he can stop pushing Harry.

Because Harry just keeps nodding like he’s fine with it, but Louis knows what the tension in his shoulders means – he knows when Harry feels flustered and pressured to speak when he can’t, stumbling over words and tripping over the expectation that he has something profound to say. Normally Louis would just swoop in and wrap up whatever thought Harry had started, but he can’t, because this is about him. Them.

“When Zayn left, Louis—yeah, he was upset, so like—I tried to be there, and we all struggled, but. Like. None more than Louis which is… understandable. And the shows after that—they were hard, and we kept trying to like, make them happen, and I just—I felt like I hadn’t seen Louis in weeks. But he was right there, and—I needed him too,” Harry admits quietly, looking intently at Harper. “I needed him too, and he wasn’t there.”

“You mean he wasn’t there for you,” clarifies Harper.

Harry nods, looking back down at his hands, twisting savagely at his rings.

“Louis?” prompts Harper, looking solely at Louis now. “Do you have anything to add to that?”

He does – he does, but he doesn’t want to admit it, because if there’s one thing he’s learned over the last few weeks is that everything wrong that’s happened is because of his drug habit. And if he says that out loud – if he tells Harry the truth – then they’ll all know that their relationship started going to hell when Louis leaned more heavily on drugs. He wants to puke or run, but instead he stays rooted to the spot, sweating as he stares at a spot over Harper’s shoulder where the window opens out into a small woodland.

“I wasn’t there for Harry because I could only think of how I was hurting,” Louis says, ripping the words from his lungs, one by one. “I was using coke more heavily—I could only really think about—” Louis focuses on a sparrow hopping around in the trees and not on the way his heart is hammering in his chest, guilt and shame chasing themselves around in his bloodstream. “I could only think about when I’d get my next hit.”

In his peripheral vision he can see Harry twitch, an aborted sort of movement that makes Louis want to disconnect further, because he might’ve hurt Harry before, but he’s also hurting him now.

“During this time, Louis, why were you using drugs? I think it might be helpful if Harry understands why you felt that you had to use.”

Sliding his gaze back to Harper, Louis can only wonder why the man is doing this to them. Can’t he see that it’s hurting Harry? Can’t he see that it’s only going to make them worse? If this was supposed to be about healing and helping, he’s a pretty shit therapist. Louis glances at Harry for a split second – Harry’s staring at him with tears in his eyes – before he looks away.

“I—I just… I wasn’t interested in trying anymore. I just—I wanted to not be in my head or in my own life, because it just… it hurt, and I was tired of that.” Louis takes in a deep breath, just like he’d learned to do in yoga, before releasing it slowly. “Zayn had left, and the band was ending, and—those were two things that I’d taken for granted to always be there.”

“That’s good, Louis,” Harper says, and Louis can see his pen sliding across the notepad in quick, fluid movements. “Harry, do you have any questions? About your relationship during this time? Or Louis’ addiction?”

For a second, Louis thought that Harry was going to remain silent – some kind of united front against Harper – but then he says, “Why didn’t you tell me you were struggling?”

Louis can’t help it – he looks at Harry, sharp and confused and Harry looks back at him, torn apart.  
“Because,” he says, trying to find the words to put to his thoughts. “I didn’t—I didn’t want you to know. You were hurting, and I knew that, and I just—didn’t want to make things worse for you.”

“But you did. You left me alone.”

“I know,” Louis says quietly.

“And I would’ve rather you had told me you were struggling than to tell me nothing and pull away from me like you did,” Harry continues, the words spilling out faster and faster now. “Like—I didn’t know what was happening with the band and then I thought I’d done something wrong to make you pull away again, and I just—you know I don’t like that. I can’t handle it, Lou.”

Harper slides back into the conversation here as Louis is trying hard to tear his eyes from Harry’s wide ones, but he can’t.

“Is this something you’ve discussed in the past, then?” says Harper casually, looking between them.

“We—” Harry looks at Louis to fill in the rest.

“We’ve talked about it before, yeah. I need to be more open with my thoughts and emotions, and Harry needs to not force them out of me or push expectations of what I should be feeling or saying. We—we’ve tried to work on this before.” Louis sees Harry smile slightly, proud that Louis’ remembered.

“It’s harder to do when we’re busy or stressed,” Harry adds.

“But that’s usually when it’s the most important, no?” Harper says, and the answer seems fairly obvious, so they all end up nodding. “Good, so we’ve acknowledged that, for Harry, the point of change started with the end of your band and the escalation of your addiction, Louis. We’ve established why Louis used more heavily, and why he never discussed this with you, Harry. Are we all on the same page? Any questions?”

Louis looks at Harry, who looks back earnestly, and there’s just—so much still sitting between them, unsaid and unrealised, that Louis feels overwhelmed. But at least this one this is clear, so they both shake their heads for Harper, and they move on.

“Louis, I’d like to come back and ask you the same initial question I asked Harry. At what point in your relationship do you feel that things changed?”

He doesn’t even know where to begin – he wouldn’t know how to go about pinpointing one specific moment. Had things with Harry changed up ‘til now, or had they always been in this rough, limbo-like phase? Things certainly hadn’t been the same after their last break up, which had lasted for three months and left both of them miserable. Coming back together had felt like the only way either of them could be happy again, and that’s where they’d ripped themselves open and tried to be honest about what they were feeling and how to fix it. That’d been a milestone for Louis – he’d wanted to call the whole thing off after every sentence that Harry spoke, because talking about his own behaviours and thought patterns is terrifying.

The resolution they’d reached was to talk more – and they had; it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t often pleasant, but it made them stronger because they understood more. At what point had that stopped for Louis?

Part of it did die when Zayn left and the band disintegrated. But when Louis thinks about when he’d severed things with Harry completely, it hadn’t been then – even when he was high and trying to shield parts of himself from Harry, he still cared; he did what he did because he cared.

“I think—” Louis’ fingers tremble as he clears his throat. “I think when I had my accident.”

The room is quiet as Louis pokes and picks at the cast on his arm, the last reminder that Louis had been hurt.

“Can you expand on that?” Harper says, treading carefully.

“Lou—” Harry whispers, and Louis shakes his head.

“I need to say this,” he says, looking at Harry unwaveringly. “When—when it happened, that night, I just. You hadn’t done anything wrong. Nothing, like, made me do it. I just did it. It just happened, and when you asked me after it… asked me why, I just… I realised that something had changed, because I hadn’t considered you when—it happened.”

Harry blinks, and tears fall down his cheeks.

“And that’s—that’s how I know that something changed, because I didn’t… think about you. I didn’t—wonder what you would do without me, and I didn’t try to contemplate if you would care, I just did it. I made it happen and I only thought of myself.” Louis swallows thickly and adds, “and I’m sorry.”

The room falls silent as Harry and Louis look at one another. Even Harper’s silent, his pen stilled above the notepad paper and his eyes watching the two of them, but all Louis can register is the green of Harry’s eyes and the pink at the tip of his nose and the way his cheeks are wet, chin decorated with tears that fall to the fur of his coat.

“Do you still love me?”

Harry’s voice is broken, jagged like he’s cut himself over glass trying to work up the courage to ask it, and Louis hates that – hates that he constantly pushes his own self-doubt onto Harry, too.

“Of course I do,” Louis says. “But the only thing stronger than that is, like. The things that I hate about myself, and the only thing that helps to keep them in check is you.”

When Harry stands up, Louis does the same, and they meet in the middle, arms curving around each other, pushing and pressing, as if they can become the same person and understand all the things that have kept them apart.

Louis can feel Harry exhale, his chest stuttering with the action, as he buries his nose into Louis’ neck.

“I hate this,” he whispers to Louis, quiet enough that only they can hear. “I hate that this is what we are now.”

“I know.”

“I want you to come home,” Harry says, trembling in Louis’ arms. “I want you to come home and I want to work this out. I want our old life back.”

“I know,” Louis repeats. “But we can’t, Haz. We need to fix this – I need to fix this.”

Harry pulls away, hair a mess, and nods. He unceremoniously wipes his cheeks with the back of his hand and looks at Louis, a watery smile on his face. “I understand.”

It’s a little while later when Harper calls the session to an end, warmly shaking Harry’s hand and inviting him back the day after tomorrow. Harry, of course, agrees, and leaves after hugging Louis tightly once more. In the aftermath, Louis looks at Harper.

“Do you think that went alright?” he asks nervously.

“Yes,” agrees Harper. “I think you’ve found someone quite willing to always forgive you for your errors, so long as you apologise.”

Louis smiles. “That’s Harry.”

***

They have couples therapy sessions every second day for almost two weeks, and it’s gruelling. Louis ends up making Harry cry almost every time, wrenching tears from his eyes and watching as Harry drags himself back two days later to just do it all again. It’s exhausting, and the worst part is that when it’s over and Harry’s gone, Louis has to keep going as if his day hasn’t just been completely derailed – he sits in his informational lectures and swims laps in the pool, thinking about all the terrible things he and Harry have done to each other that are only now just seeing the light of day.

Harper’s the perfect middleman, allowing Louis and Harry to talk amongst themselves but always roping them back in if the conversation detours off topic. He writes notes occasionally, directing questions to either of them if he feels that the conversation thus far has been imbalanced. And he’s supportive, too – always makes sure to tell them they did well after tearing the truth from their hearts for the hundredth time.

It doesn’t get any easier when they move away from recent events like the band’s split or Louis’ accident. Harper takes them through the early stages of their relationship and their first serious fights – their first serious break up. It hurts, like picking at old scars that have long past healed, because Louis can still remember the pain from when they were fresh. Every session that Louis has with Harry feels like he’s taking further and further steps back from where he wants their relationship to be, until Harper finishes one meeting with,

“Why do you keep coming back to each other? What’s worth fighting for about your relationship?”

And Louis looks at Harry while Harry looks back, and they both know the answer – each other. What they have is kinetic and dynamic; they’re best friends who know how to have fun together without all the romance stuff, but that’s fun, too. The kissing, the sex – there’s never been any problem there (until recently, but) – but it was never the heart and soul of their relationship. At the core of everything is the two boys they’d been when they’d met and the acceptance of everything they were, are, and might be – despite knowing none of it. Louis doesn’t know the science to explain it, but he’s drawn to Harry in a way he’s never felt before; Harry is his answer to everything.

Harry is why Louis keeps fighting.

And Harper smiles and smiles, telling them they did good today and lets Harry leave while holding Louis back for a few more minutes, going over a few points and telling Louis what he wants him to write about in his journal that night as homework.

It’s good – it’s not great, but it’s good, and it’s something. It’s progress.

***

“You know, I think there’s something different about you now,” Liam says on his first visit to Castle Craig.

Louis hasn’t really wanted visitors – he’s going through enough with Harry at the moment, but Liam had begged and pleaded that he wanted to see Louis, so. Here they are. ‘Here’ being the horse stables on the Castle Craig grounds, which house at least a dozen horses used for a new kind of therapy that involves animals. Louis hasn’t participated, but some of the other patients say that it works wonders.

“Yeah?” Louis says, leaning on the wooden fence that penned the horses in. “What’s that?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but like. You seem happier.”

Louis looks at Liam like he’s just grown a second head. “Are you fucking with me?”

“What? No! Seriously, Lou.” Liam looks like a kicked puppy as he hurries to explain. “Like, I’ve seen you sing in front of thousands and I’ve seen you win some of the biggest awards in the industry, and like… you were happy, of course. We all were. But like… now you’re more—liberated, I guess. Free.”

“’Liberated’ is a big word for you, Payno. You swallow a dictionary or summat?”

“Nah, been doing a bit of reading though, haven’t I? A few books here and there has taught me some new words.” Liam seems proud of himself. “I even learned what an agraffe is.”

“Oh?” Louis says, playing along.

“It’s that, like, little annoying wire fucker that holds the cork in on a wine bottle.” Liam nods, grinning.

“Look at you, getting all sophisticated,” he teases.

Liam beams happily. “I’m trying.”

Their attention is distracted from the topic at hand when a horse trots over, head bobbing and mane flowing like it’s just been brushed.

“Hey girl,” Liam coos, making a clicking sound with his mouth that draws the friendly horse over to him. He stoops for a moment to yank a handful of fresh grass from his side of the fence before offering it to the horse, who begins chomping immediately. “But I mean it, yeah? You seem good.”

Louis doesn’t say anything but instead just watches Liam with the horse, hand flat and letting it eat from his palm while he strokes its head with the other. He’s missed Liam – reliable, steadfast Liam, who’s all solid hugs and eagerness. It hadn’t seemed real that Louis could lose Liam when the band split; he knew that no matter whatever happened between them all, Liam would probably still come to find him at the end of the world, when all was said and done.

“Is this place any good?” Liam asks casually, looking over at Louis. “Are you—you know, like. Sober?”

And that’s something about Liam too – the way he never really cared when Louis got high. Maybe it was because he always seemed like he wanted to be invited when it was Louis and Zayn’s sneaking off to do a line or smoke a joint; maybe it was because Liam only ever talked about it if he was angling to come out with them. He was non-judgemental, but also encouraging, and the mention of drugs with Liam present itches at the part of Louis’ skin that he’s been trying to pretend doesn’t exist. It’s like a reminder of the person he used to be – and the person that Liam still views him as.

“Yeah,” Louis says, glancing away from Liam’s inquiring face. “I’m sober. But the point of this place is to teach me how to stay sober.”

“Oh.” Liam brushes his hands off as the horse snorts. “That makes sense, I guess. So, like, you won’t ever get high again? Not even weed?”

“I don’t know, Liam, I think that’s probably frowned upon. One kind of high could lead to others, y’know?”

“What about alcohol?” presses Liam. “You gotta be able to have a drink every now and then, right?”

Louis can feel his frustration rising. “I don’t know – alcohol was never really a problem for me, so, like, I could still drink.”

“Cool. We should go for a drink when you get out – there’s a few good DJs playing at the Funky Buddha in a couple of weeks—”

“No offense Liam, but can you shut the fuck up?” Louis snaps, and when he turns to Liam, he sees that Liam looks surprised at Louis’ outburst. “I can’t be thinking about when I get out unless it’s about, like, organising a therapist and an AA group. I need to find a sponsor and I need to find a support network, and somehow I don’t think that’ll happen in a fucking club, alright?”

“Shit—sorry Lou, I didn’t—I didn’t mean anything, I just—I thought you might want to celebrate, you know?”

And Louis knows Liam’s sincere – can see the apology written all over his face – but he’s exhausted and on edge, and Liam’s there and receptive, and Louis just—wants to hurt—

“Celebrate what? The fact that I’m an addict and probably will be for the rest of my fucking life?” Louis shakes his head at Liam.

“I know it’s hard, but like—?”

“You don’t know a fucking thing – you turn up here right as I’m just about done, hoping to clear your conscience for not even calling, not once, when I was in hospital? How long have you known I was here, Liam?” Louis’ suddenly up in his space, wishing he was just that inch or two taller. “How long between when you heard I was in hospital, when I was in this hospital, and this fucking moment when you put on your fucking Rolex and deign to book a flight?”

Liam doesn’t know what to do or say, clearly, and he fumbles over his words as he says, “I—I don’t know, like—a couple weeks, I just—life’s busy, Louis, you know that—”

“Give it a rest,” Louis spits, giving Liam a harsh once over. “We’re supposed to be friends. Happy fucking fifth year anniversary of that, hey Liam?”

He doesn’t bother to stick around after that – doesn’t care what Liam has to say, whether it’s an apology or a retort – and storms away from the horse stables as far as his dew-wet Vans will take him.

Maybe it’s just habit or routine, or a sign that he’s trying to change, but Louis heads straight to Harper’s office, knocking rapidly on the door and being called inside. He’s slightly breathless from his anger and the walk up from the fields, and Harper looks at him for a hard minute before indicating Louis’ usual armchair.

“I thought you had a visitor,” starts the therapist, getting up to close his office door before perching on the edge of his desk in front of Louis, arms folded and eyes pensive.

“I did,” he says, fist tight. “Liam. Friend. Bandmate.”

“Of course. How did it go?”

“Horrible.” Louis raps his knuckles on the wooden frame of the armchair, enjoying the razing pain. “I just—I don’t think I’m ready to go back home. I don’t know if I can live out there anymore.”

Harper nods. “Any particular reason why you think this?”

“Just, like—the lifestyle I used to lead, with the clubs and easy access to drugs and the people I hung around – I don’t think I’m strong enough to be put back into the middle of all that and remain sober.”

“Louis,” Harper says gently, shifting to sit in the second armchair. “We’ve had many high profile clients come to Castle Craig to fight their dependence on chemicals, and all of them had gone on to lead happy, abstinent lives. You must know that I have faith you will continue that tradition.”

“But what if I can’t,” Louis begs. “What if it’s too much and I just—I just can’t help myself and I get high again. What then?”

“If you forget all the things you learned here over the last five weeks and use drugs, then you use drugs. There is no death penalty for a mistake, Louis – you are human, and we are meant to stumble and fall sometimes. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”

Louis groans, slumping back in the armchair. “It’s too much pressure, I don’t like it. I’d rather stay here until I know I’m ready to go back out there.”

Harper stands and shifts around to his proper desk chair. “If you think that’s what you want after your full six-week treatment program has concluded, then we can certainly organise an extended stay. But if my professional opinion means anything, I think you’re just about there, Louis. I think you’re ready.”

***

Louis thinks about what Harper said a lot over the next day, repeating it to himself when he remembers what Liam had said. It’s not that Louis is one to cave to peer-pressure, but the thought of returning to his house in Hampstead or, worse, LA, makes him feel like he’s more likely to fall back into old patterns. With just a little over a week left in Castle Craig, Louis can only think about the end – how close it is, how unprepared he feels. Where has the time gone? What has he got to show for it?

The need to get high is still there, late at night when he lies awake, flat on his back. His thoughts drift to it – how good it would feel to do a line and feel his brain unspool itself from the tight knots it’s been running itself into all day, how easy it would be to sign himself out of the treatment program at Castle Craig and just go find some - to get back on track with his life.

But what had started as a desire to make Harry happy has, somehow, become something that Louis wants to see through for himself, too. He wants to keep doing the program at the hospital – he wants to do better. Because if the sessions with Harry have shown Louis anything, it’s that he’s hurting the people he loves with the things he does. And the pain will always be there – the pain of loneliness that threatens to chase him down at night and claim him, the fear of losing everyone who claims to love him – but Louis is tired of letting it control him and run him down; he’s tired of it keeping him from doing things.

He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he leaves – if there’s anything he can even do with himself – but it’s worth finding out, and it’s worth trying to do that sober.

The resolution makes Louis sit bolt upright in bed, eyes wide and heart racing with excitement. It’s the first time he’s ever felt that – the desire to work harder at this thing that he’s found himself in the thick of.

Kicking off his sheets, Louis grabs his phone from his bedside table and speed dial’s number one: Harry. He answers on the second ring.

“Lou? Are you okay? Is everything alright?”

“Yeah! Yeah, everything’s great, actually, I just—I really need to tell you something,” he gushes, voice quick and frantic.

“We’ve got a session tomorrow – don’t you want to talk about it with Harper there?” Harry asks, slightly wary.

“No,” Louis says, rocking on the balls of his feet. “It’s just for you.”

“Oh.” Harry sounds sleepy. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I’m great, I promise,” and he bites at the nail of his thumb nervously before clearing his throat. “I just—I realised something as I was trying to sleep and I wanted to tell you because—because I just did.”

“Okay?”

“I want to get better,” Louis says, holding his breath for a few seconds while his heart pounds in the interim. “I want to be sober, and I want to get out of here with the intention of remaining sober. And I want to, like, keep getting better, even when I’m out of here – I want to keep talking about things with a therapist. Not Harper, he’ll probably be busy, but… someone. I want to get better for you.”

There’s silence on Harry’s end, and Louis wonders for a second if Harry’s fallen back asleep, but then he sighs.

“I don’t want you to get better for me, Lou,” Harry says. “I want you to get better for you. I want you to want that for yourself.”

“I do! I do,” Louis half-yells. “I promise I do, but – I want to get better for you. For us to work better. I know that a lot of my, like… problems have weighed us down, and I want to lighten the load. Or something. I don’t know, what I’m trying to say is that I do want to get better for me, but also for you. What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with wanting to do it with you in mind, too?”

“Nothing, Lou,” whispers Harry, and he sniffles. “Nothing, that’s—that’s perfect, honestly.”

“Are you—happy?” Louis guesses, wishing he could see Harry.

“Yeah,” and Louis is sure he can hear more sniffling, “Yeah, I am.”

“Can I FaceTime you? Can we talk for a bit?”

“Uhm, yeah. Yeah, okay.”

They hang up and Louis calls him on FaceTime, settling back into bed as the screen takes a few seconds to load from black to blurry to clear – and then there’s Harry, hair tied up in a bun and his eyes puffy from both lack of sleep and from crying. He looks beautiful, and Louis’ heart lurches with the need to just sleep with Harry beside him again – it’s been weeks; he’s never gone this long without being next to Harry for at least a night.

“Hey,” Louis breathes, pulling the quilt over his head to create a one-man tent.

“Hi,” Harry says, smiling at Louis with the hint of a dimple in his cheek. “You’re supposed to be asleep, y’know. Curfew and all.”

“Couldn’t. Besides, I don’t think I’m the only one – Marcy next door’s been playing “I Will Always Love You” on repeat at low volume for the last three hours.” Louis smiles.

“Maybe you should go check on her – she could be upset,” Harry suggests, smiling harder.

“Her room smells like mothballs and cheddar cheese, so I think I’ll pass.”

Louis watches Harry for a few seconds, trying to take him all in – soft, late-night Harry is one of his favourites. When all the clothing and swagger is stripped away, Louis feels the closest to Harry – it’s not that he’s more or less like the Harry that Louis fell in love with, but it’s just easier for him to remember that person. He loves Harry always – he loves fancy Harry, the one who’s a complete show pony and thrives on dressing up for events, and he loves fashion Harry, the one who is critical and innovative in his clothing choices, and he loves casual Harry, the one who chooses his shirts according to his moods. But he loves morning Harry, who rolls out of bed naked and starts making pancakes, and he loves lazy day Harry, who will walk around the house in sweatpants and a huge jumper, completely uncoordinated and unrepentant, and he loves night Harry, who cuddles into Louis with his hair curling at his temples from the steam of his shower and wearing low slung shorts and a plain shirt. Every Harry is his Harry – and he loves them all equally – but there’s something so intimate about the times when Harry’s dressed down, because Louis knows he’s one of the only people to see that.

“I’ve missed you,” Louis says suddenly, sliding a bit further back on his pillows and holding his phone higher so that the glow illuminates his face enough for Harry to see that he’s sincere. “Like—I hate the way we left things that day when you visited—”

“Me too.”

“I shouldn’t have told you to leave like that – it wasn’t your fault that, like, I couldn’t get hard.”

“Have you…?” Harry flushes a little in the lamplight of his hotel room. “Since then?”

Louis laughs quietly. “A few times – not like before. Don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Go easy on yourself, Lou – you’re going through some stuff, and like, the internet said it was very natural to have a lowered sex drive in times of emotional upheaval…”

“Wait,” Louis says, laughing, “did you Google search dick problems?”

“I’ll have you know that there were only a few that led to promises you were going to get cancer and die, so I’d say it was a success,” Harry replies, but his straight face lasts for only a moment before he’s laughing, soft and sleepy with his eyes half-closed.

Louis knows Harry’s tired now, because his eyes stay closed longer than they do open when he laughs, and he wants to be selfish and ask Harry to keep talking to him, but he knows that he should be the responsible one and end the call now.

“You should go,” Louis says when Harry’s blinking owlishly at him through the screen of his phone. “You look exhausted.”

Harry yawns against the back of his hand. “Am a bit, yeah,” he mumbles, rubbing at his eye with the same hand. “Want to talk to you, though.”

“You’ll talk to me in like… twelve hours.”

“Yeah, but like. That’s twelve hours away.”

When Louis smiles, Harry smiles, and it’s so close to flirting that Louis feels giddy-happy in his stomach, like he’s eighteen again and in the throes of a crush. It’s been too long since he’s gotten to talk to Harry like this – casual, light, fun. Their sessions are important, but when they usually end with one or both of them crying from stress or sadness, the romance is usually not at the forefront of their minds.

“Just before you go…”

“Mm?”

“There’s, like. Rooms on the grounds for—for family or friends who are, like, working with patients.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Yeah, and like—I thought that, like, if you wanted to, you could… stay. A night, or a few, if you want. Your hotel is probably really nice, so don’t worry about it—”

“I’m staying at a B&B owned by an elderly couple who insist on ironing my underwear,” Harry says. “I don’t think coming there for a few nights would be that bad.”

He smiles with his bottom lip caught in his teeth, all pink lips and dimples, and Louis loves him so much that he’s afraid he might rip in half with it – just combust spontaneously, letting it eat him up until there’s ashes and smoke. Somehow, he thinks he might rise again – a phoenix from the ashes, intent on deserving the love that Harry gives him.

“Really? You would?”

“’Course. We could, like—hang out. Talk.”

“Yeah,” Louis nods, and when Harry yawns again, eyes watering, Louis insists that they go. With goodbyes and quick, heated “I love you’s,” they hang up, shy smiles and flushed cheeks still present even in the dark of their separate rooms.

***

It takes only one signature and the nod of approval from Harper before Harry is officially given a room on Castle Craig grounds. It’s not in the manor house – that’s reserved for patients only – but there’s a nice little complex a few minute’s walk east of the house that is provided for patient’s friends, family, and partners. The rooms are structured around a central garden in the middle, which is pebbled and filled with hedges and succulents; it’s tranquil and tidy, and while the rooms are fairly basic, they’re nonetheless clean and comfortable.

“It’s not much, but…”

“No,” says Harry, walking in and dropping his suitcase on the bed. “No, this is a lot better than that B&B, you have no idea. The wallpaper alone…”

There’s rules, apparently, about how long Louis is allowed to be at Harry’s residence – nothing over half an hour to begin with. There’s also the fact that Harry’s bags had had to be searched before he even signed into Castle Craig – nurses rooting through his things and shaking his shoes, looking for drugs or alcohol. It had been pretty stringent, and though they’d apologised for the extreme measures, Harry had taken it all with good grace.

His clothes are a mess when he flips open his suitcase, and Louis winces at the expensive YSL shirts that have been crudely pushed and crushed – he’s sure that if the nurses had known how expensive they were, they might’ve taken a bit more care. But Harry can’t stop smiling and looking over at Louis every few seconds, as though he might disappear if Harry looks away for too long.

“What is there to do around here?” Harry asks as he unpacks, placing toiletries in the small and modest en suite and his boots at the end of his bed. “Anything fun?”

“Depends on your definition,” says Louis, flopping onto the bed and shoving his one working hand into his pocket. “There’s horses, though they’re less for riding and more to just… pat and feed, I think. And then there’s the gym and pool, there’s the art room, which is where people mostly just finger paint and say that it’s a representation of the time they first got high.”

“Lou,” Harry reprimands.

“And then there’s the games room, which is mostly just chess and checkers and shit like that. Honestly, the lack of technology here is alarming – they don’t even offer free wifi.”

“I was thinking I might go and visit Marcy,” Harry says, trying hard not to smile but even with his lips closed, his dimple digs into his cheek. “See this cheddar cheese room for myself.”

“Fine, don’t believe me, but it’s pungent and I’m frankly afraid it’s contagious.” Louis itches at the skin beneath his cast. “Also when’s my appointment for this fuckin’ thing to get taken off?”

Looking over his shoulder as he hands a few of his more precious items in the closet, Harry frowns. “Another two weeks, I think,” he says, and when Louis lets out a dramatic groan, Harry smiles. “Annoying?”

“You have no idea.” The edges of the cast around his hand have gone grimy, and he’s almost forgotten what it feels like to have water on his skin. “Maybe we can just crack it off now – it feels healed, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Harry shakes his head fondly at Louis. “No chance – I’m not going to be responsible for you hurting yourself further. That arm’s going to bake for the full eight weeks.”

Rolling his eyes, Louis continues to itch at the skin he can only reach when he jams his index finger in up to the knuckle. “You want to look around? We’ve got a bit before our session.”

Harry agrees, skipping into step alongside Louis as they head out of the guest quarters and into the acres and acres of land that belongs to Castle Craig. The day is overcast, boiling with heavy, grey clouds that droop over their heads, threatening to spill at any moment.

Louis looks at Harry, who seems so happy that it’s catching – he’s got his beanie pulled over his ears, and his curls are curling down his neck and collarbones, and Louis hadn’t realised until now that they’ve grown even more since he was last at home. What used to be such a point of self-consciousness for Harry is now something that he embraces and loves, and Louis watches those long curls dance in the wind, smiling.

“What?” Harry asks, and Louis looks up at him. His green eyes are the same as the fields all around them on – green on green. “You’re smiling.”

“I know,” Louis says. He tugs Harry to a stop on the grass, fingers curling in Harry’s thick jacket. “I’m happy.”

And when he tugs Harry down a little to reach him, he goes easy, allowing the two of them to fold together in the way they used to, lips finding one another’s without hesitation. There’s a jolt of something when they do kiss one another – a flurry of new new new that contrasts so heavily with the old that Louis is dizzy with it, opening his lips and feeling Harry do the same, and as quickly as it started, it deepens.

Harry’s hands come up to hold Louis’ face, turning him just so to deepen it further, and it’s not as heated as they used to make it – it’s more innocent, more tentative; it’s like they’re both still testing waters they used to swim in regularly.

When they pull away, foreheads resting together, Harry exhales shakily, and Louis can feel him smile against Louis’ mouth.

“Missed that,” he murmurs, eyes opening as he pulls back. “Though I think you’re due for a shave.”

He runs his fingers across Louis’ beard, which he hadn’t bothered to shave in weeks. “Thought you liked it,” Louis counters, leaning into the touch so that Harry does it again, running his fingertips down the length of Louis’ jaw.

Humming, distracted, Louis can tell that Harry’s enjoying the feeling of it razing his fingertips. “It’s red in the sun,” he mumbles, eyes darting to Louis’ and then back to his beard, fascinated.

“Recessive Irish gene.”

Laughing, Harry drops his hand to Louis’ neck, thumb hovering over his pulse point. “That what you told Niall to score brownie points?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you that – you might use it.” Louis is sure that Harry can feel the way his heart is hammering – it’s been so long since they were close like this; this easy with one another. It’s new in an old kind of way, and Louis wants it so much that it pretty much eclipses almost any other feeling.

“He already likes me better, so I have no need,” grins Harry, hand curling around the back of Louis’ neck.

“Fuck off, like hell he does.”

“We play golf together – a lot of time to just talk and bond, Lou,” Harry says, green eyes roaming all over Louis’ face. “Don’t be jealous, he still loves you, but you’re like… third-best.”

“Third!”

“Behind me and Liam,” explains Harry, smiling.

“Now I know you’re lying, because Liam pisses Niall off more often than not, so.” Louis’ hand hesitates for a split second before he lets it rise to curl in Harry’s hair, twisting the ringlets around his fingers and tugging just slightly. He watches the reaction on Harry’s face with a curved smile growing on his face. “Do you want to keep fighting over Niall or do you maybe want to, like… kiss me again?”

Harry’s smile breaks, and his eyes become little half-moons of happiness. “Definitely the latter.”

***

The change is noticeable in their sessions with Harper, and Louis should’ve guessed that the man would pick up on it. For all of Louis’ early doubt about the abilities of therapists, he’s come around of late – maybe they’re not all complete hacks. It isn’t just the progress with Harry that makes Louis think so; the change in his own thought patterns is evident in the way he’s better able to stop negative thoughts before they fully form. It doesn’t always work – sometimes the thoughts are too strong to beat back down, but he remembers what Harper told him about being strong enough to lead a chemical-free life post-Castle Craig, and he weathers the storm as best he can with that in mind.

The want and need to get high is still there, and Louis is still trying to come to terms with that – the way he’ll lie awake at nights sometimes, so strung out and tired from the day but unable to stop the tug in his veins that calls to something to ease his bones. Sometimes it’s there when he thinks about the past – someone’s story about their father that makes Louis bodily twitch or a flash of a smile in a crowd that reminds him of Zayn. And maybe that kind of need will never go away, but Louis knows he’s got almost six weeks of sobriety under his belt and that that counts for something.

“You both look much better,” says Harper after Harry’s second day staying at Castle Craig.

It’s amazing how quickly Louis has adapted to having Harry back in his daily life – the way he’ll fetch two cups of tea during afternoon tea, or when he’ll get Harry’s favourite type of fruit from the buffet line. The compatibility was always in the small things – leaving extra space on couches or chairs, touching when they walk or stand together; the way they orbit one another has always been physical. Harry moving, and Louis moving with him; Louis walking, and Harry’s eyes tracking his movement unconsciously.

“I really like having Harry here,” Louis tells Harper, smiling across at Harry. “I think that this is the last piece of my treatment program that I needed to like… really get back on track.”

“To feel like your old self?” Harper asks, eyebrows raised. It’s a trick question, and Louis smiles as he catches it.

“No, not like my old self – I want to be better now. Drug free.”

“All drugs?” Harper looks at Louis with focus. “You’ve mentioned in the past your use of cannabis – do you think you can continue that?”

It’s something that Louis’ been thinking about too, if he’s honest. He doesn’t know – what if weed is a slippery slope to wanting a stronger high? What if he gets high and allows that to be his excuse for using coke again?

“I don’t think I will get high for a while, by any means,” Louis says after a minute’s thought. “At first, that is. Maybe—maybe after I get more comfortable with my abstinence I’ll, like, try it but—“

“Sorry to interrupt,” comes Harry’s voice from Louis’ side, and both men turn to look at him. “Would it be helpful if—it was a social thing, more than a personal thing? Like—say we got high together, that way I can help… I don’t know, curb your usage. Control the high.”

“Louis?”

Louis ignores Harper and stares at Harry. “You’d do that?”

“Yeah,” Harry breathes, smiling. “’Course I would. Not, like, every day, but—when you want to, we can do it together. Would that,” he asks, looking up at Harper, “be healthier? Or is that, like, a trigger too?”

“I think that is incredibly mature and responsible,” says Harper. “Knowing your limits is important, and knowing what you can and can’t handle is, too. If you’re going to use cannabis, doing so in a safe and structured environment is beneficial.”

Though Louis is willing to concede that some therapists know what they’re saying, they always struggle with saying it – their words are twisted, convoluted; Louis’ always preferred to say what he means and say it straight, no frills.

“Speaking of the future, I’d like to discuss your on-going treatment once you leave Castle Craig. Have you thought about what you’d like to do?”

“I’d like to continue seeing a therapist,” nods Louis. “And maybe attend a weekly AA meeting, at least to start off with.”

“That’s good – I can give you a few recommendations for therapist that are local to your area, though some of the best for handling depression and addiction are, unfortunately, located in London.” Harper looks between the two of them. “Would you be willing to commute?”

“Uhm,” says Harry at the same that Louis says, “Uh.”

“Something to think about, then,” Harper concludes, smiling. “I want you to know that our doors are always open, should you want to come back for a refresher weekend. We take you back through some classes, help to keep you on track – they’ve been very useful for some of our patients.”

Louis nods, not sure how he’d feel about coming back for just a weekend – it feels too much like failing, but he doesn’t say it out loud.

They spend the rest of the session going through some helpful post-treatment plan steps toward getting Louis to remain abstinent – things that Harry can do at home to emulate some of the structure established at Castle Craig, and how he can get involved in Louis’ on-going chemical free lifestyle. It’s exhausting, and when they leave at the end of their house, Louis is ready for a nap.

He’s supposed to be going to a gym session, but he instead tugs Harry toward his room, not caring that the rules of the manor house explicitly state that friends and family staying on the grounds must only sleep in their own rooms. As far as Louis is concerned, he’s earned this.

It’s oddly reminiscent of the last time that Louis pulled Harry into his room at Castle Craig, except it’s not as Spartan anymore. He’s got a few pieces of art blu-tacked to the walls that he’d done during art therapy – shitty watercolours in blues and purples and greens; there’s a few sketches of still life that he’d tried, but. It seems that art wasn’t his calling. He’s also hung a few other things up – a paper chain that he’d made while bored during one of Harper’s sessions, as well as a “compliment chain” that he’d been given in group therapy. They’d had to each write one nice thing about the other people in their session, and though Louis hadn’t known half of them as well as he should’ve, they’d all written very nice things about him.

Harry looks at all of it as he walks through after Louis, smiling softly as he drifts toward the objects. He thoughtfully examines the paintings and fingers the paper chain, nodding after everything he sees, as though it pleases him. Louis, sitting on the edge of his bed, watches him.

He’s scared of this new-found thing between them – he’s scared that this is just the honeymoon period, both of them riding on the feeling of Louis trying to get better. What happens when they go back home? What happens if Louis struggles with sobriety? He’s scared that if he fucks up again, that Harry will actually leave him for good – but more than that, he’s scared of what he’ll do if he loses Harry. It doesn’t bode well to think about it, and Louis knows that that’s a sign he should talk about with it Harry, but. He’s tired of ruining the mood; he’s tired of being the one dragging their relationship down.

“You’ve been busy,” Harry notes, stooping a little to properly look at Louis’ terrible sketch of fruit in a basket. “These are really good.”

“No they’re not,” snorts Louis. “They’re shit, but it was either draw fruit or finger paint in the corner, so.”

“Well, I think they’re good. We should frame ‘em when we get home.” Harry drops beside Louis on the bed, and if he thinks it’s a lot like a few weeks ago’s disaster, he doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t want to frame my rehab paintings, Haz. I think I’ve got enough reminders of my time here.” Louis rolls his eyes and lies down, toes poking Harry in the back. “Lay down with me.”

Harry doesn’t even need to say anything – the look on his face is equal parts dubious and wary.

“Just want to nap, I’m fuckin’ exhausted. Please? We haven’t been able to and I—I miss you.”

It might be a little bit of manipulation, but Harry goes willingly, sliding between Louis and the wall, wrapping his arm around Louis’ chest and pushing himself into Louis’ body. It’s immediately warm, like someone’s slipped a hot water bottle in between the sheets, and Louis sags with relief.

“I love you,” he mumbles, letting himself relax properly. There’s still a twinge in his collarbone from where he fractured it, but he doesn’t care – he focuses on the way he can feel Harry’s chest rising and falling, and he tries to sync his own breathing to match.

“Love you too,” Harry murmurs into the skin of his neck. “Sleep now, Lou.”

“Mmm,” is all Louis gets out before his eyes are closing, heavy with exhaustion and the weight of everything on his shoulders.

***

They’re essentially inseparable every day from then on, stuck to one another like they were in the days of The X Factor.

Back then, Louis had been loud and restless and angry – he’d wanted so much and received so little, and life hadn’t seemed at all fair, and he was just mad with the need to live and do and prove that he was worth something. And then Harry had slid into his life like he was always meant to be there, and yeah, Louis was still mad – but it also softened him, made him focus on something other than the fact that he wasn’t good enough. He felt good enough when Harry chose him over the other boys, and he coveted that attention, sought it day after day, chasing the feeling that Harry gave. Being around Harry tempered Louis’ moods; he was still loud and restless and self-loathing, but not all at once, and never for long if Harry noticed.

He’s not as desperate anymore – Louis feels safe in the knowledge that Harry only wants him – but he still needs him around to temper him down, keep him in check. Things just seem better when Harry’s around, and Louis can’t believe that there was a time that he forgot that.

They go through the routine of Louis’ day together as if they’ve got all the time in the world – Harry drawing eyes when he shucks his towel and stands on the edge of the pool in too-tight swimming trunks that cling to his thighs. He even draws polite glances in the gym, hair pulled back in a bun with a headband wrapped around his head to keep the smaller curls from escaping. The attention’s not solely because Harry’s beautiful – beauty can only be stared at so often – but because he makes a point of shaking everyone’s hands and learning all their names. He stops and speaks to them; asks how their recovery is going or if they need anything; he even learns their children’s names, their pet’s name, probably even the name of their primary school.

Harry’s charming and polite and draws people to him like a magnet, and Louis finds himself hovering, sharing in the information that Harry gleans from people as simply and easily as he would ask about the weather. People want to tell Harry things – they give it up so easily that Harry probably hungers for a challenge, and Louis’ not surprised that it comes in the form of Will.

Louis had sort of forgotten all about his sometimes-friend when Rosie came into the picture. She was bright and exciting and gave Louis all the distraction he needed, whereas Will seemed barely able to string a casual sentence together if his life depended on it. Still, Louis likes him – Will’d been kind to Louis when he was a stranger, and he’d given Louis invaluable advice for dealing with Harper – but he doesn’t think that Will is one to break against the cliff’s edge that is Harry Styles.

“He’s a tough nut to crack, that one,” Harry mumbles after being cold-shouldered out of a conversation with Will at lunch one day.

“He hates you because he hates me. I kind of—ditched him, a few weeks ago. Never really apologised for it.” Louis looks over and sees that, right on form, Will is eating alone, staring hard at the table’s surface and making no move to socialise. A few weeks prior, Louis had been exactly the same.

“You need to fix it,” Harry decides, snatching Louis’ juice box from his hand. “Go on.”

“What? No,” and Louis reaches for his drink, only to have Harry extend his freakishly long limbs out to their full capacity, and Louis can’t even get close. “Fine, but know that I did this under duress.”

Will doesn’t even so much as twitch when Louis sits down in what used to be his customary seat to the left of him, sliding in and sitting quietly. He knows what he should say, but he also wonders if Will even cares; he’s never even really seemed to show any particular interest in Louis – none more so than he paid to the food he eats, the clothes he wears, or the world going on around him. Will is blank and stopped, and Louis finds it difficult to imagine that anything would make a difference, but. Harry is watching, and Louis doesn’t want to disappoint him.

“So this is really awkward, but, uh—sorry for being a dick and ditching you when I found Rosie.” Louis watches as Will continues to chew on his food methodically. “That wasn’t nice of me, and I’m sorry.”

He watches for any sign of life behind Will’s bored eyes, and he’s surprised when they swivel around to look at him.

“Not accepted,” he says – he’s middle-aged, Louis thinks, and he just rejected Louis’ apology like a toddler.

“Well—why the fuck not? I’m being genuine,” Louis protests.

“No you’re not, your little boyfriend is the reason you’re here in the first place.”

“Listen here, pal,” Louis says, anger making his chest feel tight, “he’s got a name, and it’s Harry. If you’ve got a problem with it, then you can—”

“I don’t have a problem with him, or you, or what you do together. I ain’t a fuckin’ homophobe. I have a problem with you.”

“Why?”

Will’s cheeks are ruddy – it’s the exact same thing that happens to Niall when he’s upset. “You read my file.”

That brings Louis up short. “What?”

“You and that girl. You read my file,” he insists, cheeks flaming now, “and don’t even bother to deny it, because I haven’t told anyone why I’m here, and suddenly she gets back from one of her little Sherlock adventures, and suddenly she knows everything there is to know about me? Fat fuckin’ chance.”

“I—” Louis hadn’t even realised that Rosie’s torment had extended past the people who actively disliked her to the innocent. Guilt makes Louis’ anger ebb away quickly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know she did that, honest.”

“You saying you didn’t go with her when she did it? You two didn’t raid files?”

Louis, embarrassed, looks away. “I mean—yeah, we did, but I only ever read mine, just to see what Harper was saying. God knows what she did—” Louis feels flustered, like he’s not making any sense and only digging himself deeper. “I’m sorry for whatever she said – she had no right to do that. To invade your privacy.”

“No, she didn’t,” Will says, aggressively stabbing at his macaroni and cheese. “It pissed me off.”

“You should be pissed off.”

“She was a bitch.”

“I wouldn’t go that far—”

“She was horrible to everyone except you, mate,” Will interrupts blithely. “What did you see in her anyway?”

The question makes Louis think – what had he seen in her? What was it about Rosie that had made Louis disregard the way she acted and the way she treated people? It had been something in her eyes, her smile, the way she just was that had seemed very Zayn at the time – the way she could rope him into doing things, the way his place had always just seemed to be assumed at her side. But Zayn wasn’t cruel in the way she was – she took pleasure from it; Zayn’s cruelty was just a side effect of him doing what he thought he needed to do.

“I don’t really know,” Louis says honestly. “I’m sorry, though. Really.”

Will grunts, a monotone syllable of acceptance, and Louis knows the conversation is over. He returns to Harry, who looks up at Louis expectantly, but he just grabs his juice box back.

“Bridge mended,” he says.

Harry smiles. “Nut cracked, you mean.”

“I really, really don’t.”

“Whatever. I’m proud of you – that can’t have been easy,” says Harry, and it’s a tactic he’s learned from Harper—the compliment of Louis’ progress coupled with an open-ended statement to prompt Louis to expand upon his feelings, if he wants.

Louis doesn’t really, but he tells the truth. “You know what,” he says, biting the end of his straw, “apologising isn’t actually that hard.”

“Don’t get cocky,” Harry quips.

“I think we’ve established that I literally can’t,” counters Louis, and that rips from Harry a great honking laugh, beautiful in how graceless it is, before he slaps a hand over his mouth.

“No dirty talk at the dinner table please,” he says.

“You’re the one that googled dick problems on the free wifi provided by an elderly couple at a vintage B&B,” Louis points out. “That’s almost downright inappropriate.”

“Imagine if they get their search history billed…” Harry muses. “God, the amount of articles I read, too…”

Louis laughs, imagining a wizened old couple looking at Harry’s different google search queries. And, really, the troubles he’s having with his sex drive aren’t funny, but there’s some relief to be found in embracing the humour of it all. (Harper had also said, after Louis subtly hinted at the problems he was having, that it was extremely common and most, if not all, patients experience a completely normal and healthy sex drive upon settling into a routine of abstinence and continued positive mental health.)

“I hope you left them a generous tip,” says Louis, smiling around his straw as he finishes his juice.

Harry looks embarrassed, the tops of his cheeks pink. “They were really nice people, just a little overbearing.”

“Well I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that if you ever see them again,” laughs Louis, “what with your dick problems and all.”

“You’re mean.”

“And you’re lovely. Guess we balance each other out.”

That makes Harry flushed, pleased and happy, and he returns to his lunch, still smiling.

***

Night falls fast in Scotland, and after playing a few rounds of checkers with Harry in the games room, the gong sounds, signalling curfew. They sneak out of the house to kiss in the shadow of the porch light, Louis pressing Harry up against the cooling stone wall, hands tangled in Harry’s hair and Harry’s fingers pressing into the small of Louis’ back. It’s good – exhilarating, new – and they only pull apart when one of the nurses thumps twice on the door in warning.

“Better go,” Harry says, panting in Louis’ ear breathlessly. Louis can feel that Harry’s hard against his hip, and as much as he wants to help him out, he can’t – if he doesn’t go in, the nurses will come out, and Harry will get another strike. (The first came when they’d ignored the house rules and curfew and Harry had snuck into Louis’ room after hours. The nurses had caught onto their tricks pretty quickly, and now they made sure to check on Louis at random, unpredictable times during the night.)

“Stay,” whines Louis, grazing his teeth across Harry’s neck and making him gasp. “I want to try.”

“Lou, we can’t,” Harry reminds him, and with Herculean effort, he pushes away from Louis, running a hand through his hair and pushing it off his face. “Tomorrow, maybe, if you want.”

He’s not happy about it, but there’s nothing he can do without jeopardising everything he’s worked for at Castle Craig. “Yeah, alright,” he says, and with one last kiss to Harry’s cheek, Louis slips in through the door, leaving Harry to pick his way by torchlight to the residential rooms for visitors.  
It’s incredibly lonely returning to his room at the end of every day without Harry – he’s only just been able to readapt to having him around again, but some of the most important times for them are when they sleep. Curled around one another, Louis has always appreciated the way they seem to fit together so well, bodies entwining and moulding to one another’s. Despite the years that have passed and caused Harry to grow bigger than Louis, it seems that Harry’s grown around Louis, instead – nothing’s changed between them in that regard, and he wants that back.

Louis isn’t surprised therefore that he can’t sleep, thoughts circling on how much he wants to leave Castle Craig already and get back to his own space. This room, the one that he’s attempted to decorate and make a bit more homely, has been good to him, but it’s not his. Countless other patients have passed between these walls, carrying with them suitcases of baggage and, hopefully, leaving a little lighter. Louis wants his bed and his clothes and his dog; he wants his food and his home and his books.

When he looks at the clock next, it’s after midnight, and Louis can’t help but feel wide awake. With no chance of sleep happening, he slides out of bed and starts dressing quickly, shoving his feet into shoes and pocketing his phone. There’s adrenaline in his veins as he shoves a pillow and some bundled up clothes beneath the covers and slips out of his room, letting the door click closed quietly behind him. He’s got an idea – it’s crazy, and it probably won’t happen – but doing something will make the time pass, so he goes with it.

The hallway is mostly quiet, the patients all asleep, and Louis glides down the main staircase, making sure to avoid all the squeaky spots that would alert the eager-eared staff to his plan.  
He’s now faced with an important question: how to get out of the house? Reason would dictate that the front door is ridiculous because it’s so exposed, but logic also tells Louis that the nursing and cleaning staff are in the back of the house, doing laundry and dishes, and if he attempted the back door, he’d be exposed. His indecision lasts for a few long seconds while he lingers on the bottom step of the stairs, and before he can consider regretting it, he slips out the front door and into the night.

It’s freezing, and Louis shivers as he starts jogging down the sloping hill, fumbling in his pocket for his phone and turning on the flash. The land surrounding he manor house is pitch black, but Louis can see some lights on in the distance that guide him – he stumbles a bit, numb-footed in the dark, until he skitters over the pebbles of the residential rooms and knocks on Harry’s door.

He answers, bleary-eyed and irritated, but it melts when he sees Louis.

“Lou?” he says, letting Louis slip past him into the warmth of his room before closing the door. “Are you alright? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Louis breathes, slightly out of oxygen from the walk. “I just—I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted to ask—? He cuts himself off, hands on his hips as he tries to catch his breath, and when he catches Harry’s worried glance, he smiles. “I promise, for once, everything’s alright.”

He walks forward and crashes his lips against Harry’s, knocking the wind from both of them all over again, and they start from where they’d left it, all tongue and teeth, fingers reaching for more, and it’s good, Louis thinks, this is almost exactly what he’d been needing all night—  
Louis pushes at Harry’s chest with his good hand until the other takes the hint and peels back, hazy-eyed.

“I want a tattoo,” Louis says in a rush, words falling out. “I want a tattoo and I want to get it tonight and I know that’s really soon and rushed but I know what I want, and like, I want you there, and I just—” Searching Harry’s face for some kind of sign that he isn’t mad, Louis continues, “—I just want to remember this, y’know? I know I said I had enough reminders of this place, but none are permanent. None are visible, and I just—I need this, Harry.”

Harry doesn’t know, but instead says, “how are we going to get out of this place?”

“You have a car,” Louis reminds him, “and I’m the only that’s actually like, stuck here, so.”

The weariness evaporates from Harry’s face, a bit more liveliness coming to his features as he presses his fingers a little harder into Louis’ hips. “You sure, though? About leaving? You could get in trouble.”

“I’m graduating in two days – what more can they do to me that they haven’t already done?”

***

That’s how they end up on the road in the early hours of the morning, Louis hunched over Harry’s phone and Googling the nearest – and best – all-night tattoo parlours. For rural Scotland, their options are pretty limited, but Louis finds a place about an hour’s drive away that has some amazing reference photos online of previous clients. Once Louis’ punched in the address to the phone’s GPS, he settles back in his seat and enjoys the feeling of something different – he hasn’t left the grounds in six weeks; that’s the longest he’s been in one place since before he was put in One Direction.

The car’s headlights illuminate the road and neon lines painted on it, and Louis watches the trees dart past while Harry drives with two hands safely on the wheel. He’s got a beanie pushed down onto his head, and he’d made sure to layer up before leaving. Louis had also stolen Harry’s Packers hoodie from his open suitcase, pulling it on over the top of his much thinner sweater that had been doing nothing to protect him from the late night chill.

As far as tattoo parlours go, the one that Harry parks in front of isn’t the shadiest they’ve ever been to. With bodies full of tattoo and some impulse decisions made in less than perfect conditions, both Harry and Louis had seen the ugly side of some dodgy shops. But, the lights are on and when they walk in, everything looks clean and tidy, which is all Louis can really hope for.

They’re greeted by a man with tattoos curling up his neck and at least a dozen facial piercings that catch the light. “What can I do you for, gentleman?”

“We, uh—we don’t have an appointment, but we were wondering if you could do a tattoo?” Harry asks while Louis roams the store to look at the walls.

Some of the pictures are the same as on the website, but there’s others – newer ones snapped of client’s chests and arms and backs, scattered with heavily detailed images in rich colour, while others are more timeless in their grayscale.

“It’s pretty slow during these early hours, so I’ve got a pretty wide opening. What you wanting?”

“Oh—it’s not for me. Lou?”

Louis glances away from a snake that’s curling around a woman’s thigh to find both men staring at him. “Uh—this,” he says, producing a crumpled picture from his pocket that he’d roughly sketched during art classes and spreading it across the countertop where they’re all ground around. “It’s, uh, Icarus. You know—who flew too close to the sun.”

Harry’s looking at Louis like he’s trying to communicate something, but he says nothing and instead rests his hand on Louis’ back.

“This sketch is sick – you want me to try and neaten it up a little?” says the tattoo artist, looking at the shitty thing Louis had drawn. “Where you wanting it?”

Louis pats the soft skin of his upper ribs, right on the side of his chest. “About here?”

“Cool. Have a seat and I’ll see what I can do.”

They sit side by side with Louis curling into Harry’s chest, head on his shoulder while they let the radio play some chill, dance-like song that never seems to end. It feels surreal, Louis thinks, to be here – it’s like cultural shock to go from the quaint and orderly life at Castle Craig to an out-of-the-way tattoo parlour that also offers piercings, manned by a man twice the size of Harry with vines seemingly growing up his neck. It’s good, though – it’s different and good and Louis feels alive.

“Nervous?” Harry asks quietly while the man works at his desk.

“Nah. Kind of think I’ll like it, this time around,” he says, smiling while his fingers trace idle patterns on Harry’s thigh.

“Oh? Thought the pain thing was my thing,” whispers Harry teasingly, loud enough for only Louis to hear, and he can’t help but laugh, pinching at Harry’s leg.

“Still is. Just—I want to do this for me, y’know? Just to remind myself.”

Harry holds him a little tighter. “I get it, I promise, I just—I just want you to be sure that you will always want that reminder.”

“I don’t know. Like—there’s no point in regretting tattoos, because they were important to you at the time, so you’re inadvertently being reminded of that time, rather than of the tattoo you’re looking at. If that… made sense,” Louis says.

Harry only gets to hum in agreement before the man is back, a sheet of paper in hand. “What do you think?”

The image that’s been sketched for him is hauntingly beautiful, given the ending to the story. Icarus, head thrown back as he soars upward with his wings and arms outstretched as one, looks fearless and determined, and Louis wants to trace the lines of the body, the wings.

“Holy shit,” breathes Harry.

“It’s perfect,” agrees Louis, nodding with a lump in his throat as he hands it back. “I’ll get it.”

Harry doesn’t ask him again if he’s sure, but instead follows Louis to the seat and takes each layer from Louis as he peels them off until he’s left standing, shirtless and shivering. He’s not nervous about the pain, not really – he’s got too many tattoos for it to really be a surprise anymore – but he’s nervous about what it means; about what he’s supposed to do from here.

Because he was – is – Icarus. His accident and the drugs were his moment of flying too close to the sun, and while his feathers were charred and burned and he fell, he still wants to fly – he still wants to keep going. It’s a cautionary tale, Louis thinks as he watches the tattoo artist shave his ribs of the soft, barely-there hair; it’s a reminder of how close he came to not being here, and his commitment to doing better.

Once the ink’s loaded in the gun and Louis is settled onto his right side, exposing the left, Harry settles onto a chair in front of him. Immediately, Louis reaches out for his hand, pushing his fingers through the gaps in Harry’s and squeezing, white-knuckled already. Harry’s good with the pain – he even enjoys it, some days – and Louis knows that he’s probably wishing he could syphon a little from Louis.

“Can you talk?” Louis asks him, rolling his head to look up at Harry. He looks washed out beneath the harsh fluorescent lights – pale, dark-eyed, beautiful.

The gun starts up as the artist announces he’s starting, and Louis tries not to tense – tries to let his body just go, let the pain come as it wants – but it’s hard, and he squeezes Harry’s hand.

“So, like, did I tell you,” Harry starts, eyes on the needle point of the tattoo gun that’s on Louis’ skin. The noise half-drowns Harry’s voice out, but he’s close enough that Louis can still hear it – the deep timbre of his voice makes Louis relax. “That uh, Picasso’s at mum’s?”

Louis shakes his head, jaw set as the stinging in his side intensifies.

“Well,” continues Harry, smiling dopily down at Louis, “she calls me with an update every night, just to tell me how he is, ask how you are, that kind of thing, you know. So sometimes I tell her about the place or people I’ve met or how well you’re doing and she’s real proud, Lou, she’s—she’s really proud of you, and she always tells me to tell you that she loves you, so—love from my mum.”

It’s so far off from the original story that Harry had started telling that he laughs, just one gasp of air, before he settles for a grimace. “Thanks Anne.”

“I’ll tell her,” Harry says. “So the other day she said that Picasso was missing us and that in retribution for me sending him away, he tore up like… all of Robin’s trainers, you know, the one he goes to do walks in. He’s gotten pretty good with the exercise, y’know… saw him at it when I was driving to mum’s, powering along – he even had those, uhm—what are they called? Those hand weight things… anyway, he had those, and he looked happy.”

“What about Gemma?” Louis asks, teeth set. “What’s going on with her?”

And they continue to talk – Louis asking questions, Harry rambling on to his heart’s desire – until the tattoo artist is done and wiping the excess ink from Louis’ skin. His whole left side feels raw, like he’s been razed over gravel for the last hour, but when he twists his neck and lifts his arm, he finally gets to see what he suffered for—

It’s perfect, really, Louis thinks – Icarus bends his body upward toward Louis, wings outstretched with determination, and Louis stares back, wanting only to tell him that it’s going to be alright – because even if you fall, the fight isn’t always over.

“Thank you,” Louis tells the man, shaking his hand right before Harry does.

“Anything else tonight for you boys?” he asks, pressing some clear film onto Louis’ tattoo and sticking it down with body tape. “Another tattoo? A piercing?” And here he clearly looks at Harry.

“I always have wanted, like, a nipple piercing,” Harry says idling, hands coming up to cup his breasts. “But—not tonight. Thank you, though, for the offer. If I’m ever brave enough and back in town, I’ll definitely consider it.”

They pay and leave, Louis feeling the adrenaline from the tattoo still singing his veins as they walk back to the car. They probably should head back to Castle Craig now – they’ve pushed their luck this far, and if Louis leaves it right til dawn, he’ll have a harder time of slipping inside – but he doesn’t want to. He wants Harry to start driving and just never stop; he wants them to slip away in the dead of night and make a home somewhere far away from anywhere that they’ve ever been before. The hospital has given Louis the chance at a fresh start, and he wants to take it – take it and run and just maybe keep running.

And he knows he’s better than that now – he’s Icarus preparing a second set of wings – but he can’t help the way he feels. He’s ready to start living again.

“Ready to head back?” Harry asks, sitting patiently in the driver’s seat like he’s got all night for Louis.

“Yeah,” Louis agrees, trying not to let the disappointment colour his voice. “For now. Only a few more days ‘til home, though.”

“You think you’re ready?”

Louis knows that Harry’s not doubting him but just looking for clarification – where once Louis would’ve assumed the worst, now he has put his faith that Harry means the best.

“You know what,” he says, buckling himself in and wincing as his skin burns, “I think I am.”

***

He sleeps off the exhaustion from the tattoo and wakes up at the sound of the gong, signalling breakfast has ended and the day’s beginning. While he’s been late before, Louis still scrambles to pull on clothes and hurry down to the kitchens, not wanting to leave a bad impression mere days before he’s released. Harry’s still sitting at one of the tables as other patients pack up and head out, a few smiling or greeting Louis warmly – even Will manages a curt nod in his direction.

“Saved you some breakfast – Milly was dead set on not giving you any,” Harry informs him as he slips into a seat at the table.

“Who’s Milly?” Louis asks as he starts pouring milk into his cereal.

“The cook, Lou – you’ve been here six weeks and you don’t know her name?”

He shrugs, mouth full.

“You’re lucky she’s a kind woman at heart and allowed me to keep these – it’s technically against regulations, you know.”

“You’re against regulations,” Louis mutters, tearing up his toast, which is cold, before eating a piece.

He’s almost finished when the door opens and Peter walks in, looking bright and sunny, as if the sun has harboured a little part of itself side of him.

“Good morning, gentlemen. I trust you slept well?” says Peter, and Harry and Louis trade knowing glances before agreeing. “I just came to let you know, Louis, that you have a guest in the visitor’s lounge.”

Harry’s brow creases and he looks to Louis. “Did your mum say she was coming? I thought—”

“She couldn’t get away from work,” Louis says, confused. “Who is it?”

Peter looks at the clipboard he’s carrying, where all the guests sign in. Harry’s name is probably on there somewhere, and he just never signed out. The man’s fingers scan the list of names, searching for the right one, and when he reaches it, he pauses. Looking back Louis, polite and pleased, he says the one name that Louis hadn’t thought he’d hear at Castle Craig beyond his therapy room.

“Zayn Malik.”


End file.
